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EDMUND BURKE 



INTRODUCTION. 



The easiest way to remember the facts about the life 
of Burke is to arrange them under four heads corre- 
sponding to four periods of his life. Consider the first, 
of nineteen years, to bring him to his graduation from 
Dublin University in 1748 ; the second, to his election to 
ParHament in 1765 ; the third, to the height of his active 
public service, in 1782 ; tht fourth, to his death, in 1797. 

Burke's Early Life. 

Burke was brought up in the Protestant faith of his 
father, who was an attorney of good repute in Dublin, 
albeit a man of irritable disposition. Burke's mother, a 
Roman Catholic, was a large-minded, well-connected 
woman, with a strong hold upon the affection and rev- 
erence of her son. We shall see that the son inherited 
both the impatient temper of his father, and the liberal 
mind of his mother. Before entering college, his mind 
and temper were trained with great skill by a Quaker 
schoolmaster, Abraham Shackleton, towards whom 
Burke ever felt the sincerest respect and gratitude. In 
college his course, while desultory and whimsical, 
formed a valuable brooding period for both intellect and 
moral purpose. He himself describes it as a series of 
passionate sallies into various heights of learning, saying 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

that he passed from \\\^ furor mathematicus, through the 
furor logicus and the furor historicus, to the furor 
poeticus. Like young Francis Bacon, he took all knowl- 
edge to be his province. 
f 
How Burke Came to be in Parliament. 

When Burke was twenty he went to London, to the 
Middle Temple, to study law. Biit Ws interest was not 
continuous, his ambitions were literary and social, his al- 
lowance was withdrawn, and a period of several years 
began which passed in obscure conflict with fortune. But 
1756 saw the publication of two notable essays, and, what 
was of even greater import, his marriage to Miss Jane A 
Nugent, like Burke's mother, a Catholic and an ideal !u\ 
wife. The first of the essays was A Vindication of J 
Natural Society^ a brilliant piece of irony purporting to \ ) 
be a posthumous work of Lord Bolingbroke, so cleverly ^ 
imitated as to deceive skilled contemporary critics. The 
second pamphlet soon followed, in Burke's own name, 
entitled A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of 
Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This was a 
serious effort towards a psychological explanation of the 
origin of the standards of art, Lessing and Kant are said 
to have received valuable suggestions from it. 

As a consequence of the reputation made by these and 
other published works, and by the intimacy with the 
great literary men of London which Burke now enjoyed, 
he was invited in 1759 ^^ furnish the brains for a 
periodical called the Annual Register, which Dodsley, 
the bookseller of Pall Mall, wished to publish, Burke 
was to receive ^100 per annum for an account of the great 
current events of the year. For thirty years he attended 



2NTR OD UCTIOM. vii 

faithfully to this chronicle-editing, often glad of the 
moderate income it assured him. For six years from this 
time, he also received an income of several hundred 
pounds from a Mr. Hamilton, secretary to Lord Halifax 
in Ireland, for services of a perfunctory kind. But over 
against his happy marriage and his good beginning as an 
author, was the inexorable fact that he was not his own 
master, and that therefore he must serve whom he must, 
not whom he would. The inust was to Burke's mind, 
very unsatisfactory. He wished to do some original 
literary work, and felt that his nature and ability called 
on him to do so ; but his patron, with a selfishness which 
now appears blind as well as obstinate, insisted on his un- 
divided service; so Burke with passionate disgust and 
sense of injury, threw up his pension, and declared his 
independence in 1765. 

He was thirty-six years old, when by virtue of that for- 
tune which is said always to favor the brave, he was 
elected to Parliament from Wendover, a borough, in the 
pocket of Lord Verney who was an adherent of Lord 
Rockingham. The friendship of Lord Rockingham for 
the young '' Encyclopedia of political knowledge " does no 
less credit to the nobleman's generous insight, than it did 
service to Burke. The close of the year in which Ham- 
ilton lost a secretary, saw England gain a statesman. 

Burke's First Seventeen Years in Parliament. 

The ministerial changes from 1765 to 1782 were nu- 
merous and important. Grenville's administration which 
had begun in the year of the Peace of Paris, 1763, was 
marked by far-reaching error in colonial affairs, culmi- 
nating in the passage of the Stamp Act, in 1765. Then 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

came the Rockingham ministry, with Burke as its secret 
but powerful guiding spirit, which was dissolved as soon 
as it had shown a disposition systematically to undo the 
evil previously done, but not before the Stamp Tax had 
been removed in 1766, and Burke had made a deep im- 
pression as orator and publicist. 

Chatham followed, with a cabinet which Burke de- 
scribed as a tesselated pavement without cement. Burke 
was offered a place in this cabinet, and was urged even 
by Lord Rockingham to accept it, but he preferred to 
stand by his party, and till the death of its leader in 
1782, he never wavered in party or personal allegiance 
to the Rockingham Whigs. His first public service after 
his friends were out of office was the publication of Ob- 
servations on the Present State of the Nation. His role 
was to bolster up the interest, the information, the oratory 
of his party leaders, and at every opportunity to speak or 
write so as to impress their principles upon the public. 

Chatham failed to unite the Whigs, was taken ill, and 
resigned the government to the Duke of Grafton. In the 
three years of Grafton's administration, the king's ob- 
stinate desire to rule America with an arbitrary hand 
brought about the most unjust and oppressive legislation. 
But the timidity which accompanies the bullying temper, 
stirred by the threatening aspect of colonial commerce, 
repealed most of the obnoxious measures, leaving in 
1769, as a monument of the supremacy which dared not 
be quite supreme, the Tax on Tea. 

To Lord North, who was prime minister from 1770 to 
1782, was left the legacy of discontent in the colonies, 
fixed tyranny in the spirit of the king, and as an instru- 
ment of legislation, the Tories coupled with a body of 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

corrupt and menial Whigs. The first five years of 
North's administration completed preparations for the 
American Revolution by a series of irritating penal laws. 
The good-natured minister, easily tuning his voice to the 
royal ear, demanded the recognition of the supremacy of 
Parliament and the consequent subservience of America. 
The whole object was to teach America a lesson, and as 
parts of that bitter instruction the provinces of Mas- 
sachusetts and New York were especially subjected to 
discipline. 

The opposition fought in vain. Neither Chatham in 
the House of Lords nor Burke in the House of Com- 
mons could persuade a venal and benumbed political 
conscience to conciliate America. After three years of 
fighting, when France and Spain had joined the colonies, 
and when the popular reaction in England revolted 
against further bloodshed amongst their American kins- 
men. Lord North himself yielded every point in the con- 
test and even the king was silenced. But it was too late ; 
the counsels of generosity and justice could avail nothing 
at such a day, and the colonies were alienated forever. 

America was not the only object of legislative con- 
cern during these troubled years, but it may fairly be 
said to have been the most pressing, and the most full of 
consequence to the future of England. For it must be 
remembered that statesmen like Chatham and Burke were 
not alone in seeing that the subversion of English liber- 
ties in America meant the subversion of English liberties 
at home. On all accounts, therefore, it is natural that 
we should pass lightly over the activities of Burke in 
other directions, while especially emphasizing his work in 
behalf of constitutional freedom. 



X Introduction. 

Throughout the struggle of John Wilkes for his ju' ,xy 
won seat in the House of Commons, Burke fcaght 
strongly on the side of liberty of election. In 1770, in 
the midst of threatening anarchy, was published his 
Thoughts on the Present Discontents, a calm and power- 
ful exposition of the nature of true government, and a 
conservative proposition for rendering Parliament more 
truly representative of the national will. In November, 
1774, six months after his speech on American Taxation, 
Burke was honored with an unsought election to Parlia- 
ment from Bristol, commercially the second city in the 
realm. His speeches at Bristol are of interest from the 
light they throw upon his theory of the duties of a popu- 
lar representative — a trustee of his constituency. 

The March of the following year saw Burke delivering 
his speech on Conciliation to a parliament of ears that 
heard not. Seventy members of that house sat for rotten 
boroughs which were the property of the king ; about a 
hundred and fifty more were controlled by borough- 
jobbing nobles like the Duke of Newcastle, and were at 
the disposal of the king ; a great number more were own- 
ers of estates whose highest political ambition was to 
lighten their burden of taxes by exacting a war-revenue 
from America. Several seats, at a time when it cost a 
decent man thousands of pounds to secure a seat for 
honorable service were occupied by the puppet-officers of 
the royal household. There was no doubt how the 
turnspit of the king's kitchen would stand on questions 
of sacrifice of personal advantage for the public good, 
none about the position of the groom of the stole or his 
treasurer, the steward of the household or his retinue, the 
board of green cloth, or the board of works. It is easy 



INTkODUCTION. XI 

to Sc. how such parliamentarians as these would regard 
appeals to magnanimity as in politics the truest wisdom, 
and how much they would listen to, and understand, of 
the profound, the historical, the logical, the literary, in 
the speech on Conciliation. 

All this mass of political corruption Burke deliberately 
attacked in 1780, when there was nothing further for him 
or any one else to do towards redeeming the colonies, in 
his schemes of Economical Reform. No project of his 
was ever more successful than that for reducing the num- 
ber of sinecure offices used as bribes, and the number of 
political pensions. He succeeded also in checking the 
outflow from the treasury through bad fiscal arrange- 
ments. The paymaster of the forces, for example, had 
managed with passive honesty to derive a salary of about 
thirty thousand pounds. Burke reduced it to a definite 
four thousand. 

To sum up the period, this Burke, who cast the choicest 
of English oratory before seats which were either quite 
vacant, or occupied by loungers eating nuts and oranges, 
was in the House and out, the real leader of the Rock- 
ingham Whigs \ while Lord North, blind to justice and 
deaf to mercy, followed with the unprincipled majority, 
the course dictated by an ignorant populace and a selfish 
king. When Cornwallis surrendered, North resigned and 
King George again reluctantly invited the Marquis of 
Rockingham to form a cabinet (1782). 

The Last Fifteen Years of Burke's Life. 

Even in this second Rockingham cabinet Burke re- 
ceived no place. Why, we do not fully know ; but we 
do know as Burke himself said, that a hunt of obloquy 



xii tNTRODUCTloN. 

had ever pursued him with a full cry through life, and 
that amongst other natural rewards withheld, was this 
honor of a place in the ministerial circle. However, he 
was installed in the pay office whose salary he had just 
reduced, and with a proud humility labored on in behalf 
of his party and his principles. After three months of 
office, Rockingham died, and Burke refused to serve 
under Shelburne, who soon gave place to the coalition 
between Fox and Lord North, under the nominal leader- 
ship of the Duke of Portland. But Burke, who had been 
reappointed to the pay office, favored Fox's unwise and 
unsuccessful India Billy and fell with the ministry (1783), 
while the younger Pitt became prime minister and re- 
mained so till his death in 1806. 

There are some elements of tragedy in the final decade 
of Burke's life. In the great impeachment of Warren 
Hastings, which he conducted, and in which he rendered 
justice and England valuable service, he failed of his im- 
mediate object. After the lapse of a century we can see 
that failure as a mere disguise, obscuring the purification 
of British rule in India ; but to Burke, the fourteen years 
of close application to every phase of the case seemed 
thrown away when Hastings was acquitted. 

But a far more tragic experience was the unmerited 
success, which he gained through his bigoted and pas- 
sionate hostiUty to the French Revolution. It is true 
that no motive could be more unselfish, no devotion to 
the ideals of a lifetime more faithful. But his view of 
the situation in France was narrow and mistaken, and 
therefore his championship was unjust to many of those 
very interests which he had fostered with his deepest 
affection for years. Many of those liberal, true, and 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

prophet-like principles regarding the sense of a whole 
people, the adequate motives of nations, the small value 
of untried force, and so on, were forgotten in his panic 
lest the prerogative of an ancient nobility should be im- 
paired or the feelings of an intriguing queen bruised and 
neglected. More than all this, it is strange to find the 
steady and hard-headed English people, gradually veer- 
ing to his side, and sharing his anxiety lest the order of 
things in England should be subverted as in France. 

Still more tragic was the change that came over the 
spirit of Burke in his public utterances, in the closing 
years of his parliamentary career. From the height of 
reason we find him descending to the blindest prejudice \ 
instead of the nobility of an historical philosophy we see 
him employing personal abuse ; for a never-failing stream 
of hopeful eloquence coupled with inexorable logic, we 
find pessimistic threatenings of disaster and a voice break- 
ing into screams of angry protestation. 

Such passion and perverseness could not fail to react 
upon his relations with men ; so it is with sadness, but 
not surprise that we read of the breach of friendship with 
his party in 1791, and especially with Fox, with whom 
he quarreled publicly over a difference regarding France. 
His disagreement with the party which should have been 
his, brought out his Appeal from the New to the Old 
Whigs, a reaffirmation of the position he had taken in 
the Reflections on the French Revolution (1790). This 
position was supported also by a series of Letters on a 
Regicide Peace, which urged England to force Pitt, the 
peace-minister, into war with France, and filled all Eng- 
land with dread of impending anarchy. 

But apart from these aberrations the real Burke ap- 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

peared, in the last years of his active life, in two mas- 
terpieces of cool and solid thinking ; one an economic 
tract marking out prophetic lines of free-trade, entitled 
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, the other, the Letter 
to a Noble Lord, a defence against attacks upon his pen- 
sion by two pampered noblemen, which Morley calls the 
most splendid repartee in the English language. 

With the close of the trial of Hastings, Burke had 
retired from Parliament (1794). Shortly afterwards the 
king made known his intention of bestowing a peerage 
upon him. But at the critical moment his son Richard 
died, and the title was of course withheld. To the broken- 
hearted statesman, however, bowed under heavy debt as 
well as years and sorrow, was granted through Pitt's 
efforts a substantial pecuniary relief. Even this tardy 
and partial recognition of his public service was not long 
to be enjoyed. He died at the age of sixty-eight, at 
Beaconsfield, in 1797. 

Burke as a Man. 

Green gives a graphic description of Burke's personal 
appearance in the House of Commons. ''The heavy 
Quaker-like figure, the little wig, the round spectacles, 
the cumbrous roll of paper which loaded Burke's pocket, 
gave little promise of a great orator. ' ' But this picture 
is quite unlike that drawn by several of Burke's friends, 
who saw him at an earlier period in life or under other 
circumstances. It is also quite unlike the impression 
one gets from certain of the portraits we have of Burke — 
that by Reynolds which ought to be the truest, or that 
by Romney which certainly harmonizes with what we 
should expect in Burke's face. Fortunately our basis for 



INTRODUCTION. xv 

judgment of his character is far more satisfactory than the 
contradictory evidence regarding his personal appearance. 
His charm in conversation is attested by the most 
briUiant women in France, as well as England, and in 
everything but wit he was the recognized peer of Johnson 
in the Literary Club. There it was that Burke was best 
known and loved. Johnson's admiration was not deeper 
than his friendship, and his feelings towards Burke were 
shared by Reynolds, Goldsmith, Garrick, Gibbon, Bos- 
well, Windham and the rest. Goldsmith in his i?^/«//- 
ation, amongst the epitaphs on various members of the 
club, gives a playful description of Burke. Intelligently 
construed the lines give a remarkably complete idea of 
his character. 

Here lies ouf 'g(bod Edmund, whose genius was such, 
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much ; 
Who, born for the universe, ^£rovved his mind. 
And 1^ party gave up what was meant for mankind; 
ThoO^ii fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat 
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote ; 
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, 
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining; 
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit : 
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit, 
For a patriot too cold, for a drudge disobedient, 
And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient. 
In short, 'twas his fate, unemployed, or in place, sir, 
To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor. 

The fact is that Burke's whole life was an effort to 
apply the gifts of genius to the purposes of practical life. 
This serves the world, and honors the man; but the 
process is fraught with unspeakable suffering. The 



xvi INTRODUCTION. 

noblest trait in Burke's character is his superiority to the 
rejection of his best efforts, by those whom he would have 
benefited. He went on with apparent complacency, to 
do the next good deed. Confident of his position in the 
right, and aiming too high to see petty obstacles in his 
own path, he was moved by a philanthropy which was as^ 
modest as it was sincere. Ambition never tempted him 
unless it appeared clothed in honor and animated by the 
good of mankind; and notwithstanding the rumors of 
low connections in business and religion which never 
ceased to affect his public station, no single irregularity 
has ever been proved against him, though the record of 
his life has been searched again and again by the lynx- 
eye of personal and partisan hostility. 

The one apparent exception to this statement deserves 
special comment. When Burke had been but a short 
time in Parliament, kmi^, as he was to have no consid- 
erable income and no fortune at all, he surprised his 
friends and piqued the jealoiasy Of 'his. enemies, by the 
purchase of an immense estate, valued at ^j^ 2 2,000. To 
maintain such a residence would have required. a^*<ed 
income of ^2^4, 000. Here, twenty-four miles from*"Lon- 
don, he established a stately family-seat, which he called 
Beaconsfield, after the parish in which it wa^ situated. 

Such extravagance is hard to understand ^ven in a 
man of genius, and an Irishman at that. JBut fixity, 
deep-rootedness, was a passion with Burke, and his life 
was devoted so far as his family interests were concerned, 
to laying plans for a notable posterity in a fitting environ- 
ment. To cherish such hopes was no small part of his 
religion, and it was with religious seriousness that he 
sought to realize them. Beaconsfield \vas a farm of three 



INTRODUCTION. xvii 

thousand acres. Burke became an enthusiastic student 
of agriculture. It was here that he took refuge from the 
turmoil and disappointments of political strife, and it 
was here that he received, with infinite hospitality, both 
the great men of the Literary Club, and any unfortunates 
whose situation he could improve. Here, also, it was, 
that two exiled Indian devotees, who could find no peace 
in unfeeling London, were permitted to make a temple 
of Burke's summer-house. And after his fruitless strug- 
gle on behalf of the old order in France, and after the 
desolating blow of his own son's death, Beaconsfield was 
thrown open as the home and school of sixty orphans of 
the French nobility. 

If there be a higher morality than that which regulates 
business affairs, perhaps the light-hearted improvidence 
which ended in so much^harity, may be justified on 
ethical grounds. MeatiwHue let us say that as the well- 
earned pension under the management of Mrs. Burke 
eventually canceled every debt of money, and as the im- 
providence was more than compensated for by Burke's 
dis0ess of mind, the account may fairly be considered 
closed and the debtor free. 

Burke in Public Life. 

Burke's chief principles of government may be dis- 
covered in the Speech on Conciliation, though they come 
out more definitely upon research in a broader range of 
his utterances. A catalogue of his fundamental rules 
would read thus : Seek to preserve everything possible 
that time has consecrated ; adapt the operation of forces 
to suit present conditions ; be satisfied with less than the 
ideal ; be generous rather than exacting ; remember there 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

is a higher justice than that framed in the law ; and that 
all laws derive their efficacy from the spirit of obedience 
in the people. 

The first of these principles is the one to which Burke 
was most emphatically committed. Birr ell calls him the 
'' High Priest of Order," and Perry, *'the great pleader 
for conservatism." He was conservative by nature and 
education. When innovations threatened, conservatism 
was the only thing worth living for. Reform, says he, is 
not change, but " a direct application of a remedy to the 
grievance complained of." In his Letter to a Noble 
Lordf he describes the way he went to work upon the 
problem of Economical Reform. ^'I heaved the lead 
every inch of way I made. ... I proceeded upon 
principles of research to put me in possession of my 
matter; on principles of method to regulate it; and on 
principles in the human mind%iSti in civil affairs to secure 
and perpetuate the operation." 

He goes on to express the feeling which Morley has 
pointed out as an essential element in his philosophy, a 
mystical reverence for the supernatural power which 
alone he believed could have raised a "political edifice." 
** I have ever abhorred, since the first dawn of my under- 
standing to this its obscure twilight, all the operations of 
opinion, fancy, inclination and will, in the affairs of gov- 
ernment, where only a sovereign reason, paramount to all 
forms of legislation and administration, should dictate. 
Government is made for the very purpose of opposing 
that reason to will and caprice, in the reformers or in the 
reformed, in the governors or in the governed, in kings, 
in senates, or in people." 

The remaining principles cited in the catalogue, since 



INTRODUCTION. xix 

the Speech. on Conciliation fully illustrates them, need no 
special comment here. There is a wide difference how- 
ever between merely seeing the rule by which Burke did 
his work, and appreciating the work itself. The art of 
the statesman is a thing quite beyond the principles of the 
publicist. In the effort to follow Burke in the practice 
of his profession, it is well to attempt two lines of thought : 
first a comprehension of the living realities which fur- 
nished his motives and dictated his mode of treatment ; 
second the power, and method, and beauty of the oratory 
in which he worked. 

Burke's affections were always warm towards any per- 
son or people in distress, except the French mob. In 
their case special considerations blinded him to one-half 
the truth. But in regard to the common people of Eng- 
land, the struggling peasants of Ireland, the colonists of 
America, his position was uniformly sympathetic. He 
knew their condition and he believed in their privileges, 
therefore, always for the sake of order, he made their 
cause his own. 

So truly did he do this in actual practice, that he de- 
liberately sacrificed the seat in the House to which he had 
been elected by the great constituency of Bristol. The 
issue was between justice to the trade of Ireland, and to 
the religion of the Roman Catholics in England, on 
the one hand, and the wishes of the great com- 
mercial corporation on the other. Burke never hesi- 
tated. True to the view of the duty of a representa- 
tive which he had avowed boldly on the day of his 
election at Bristol, he chose the course dictated by 
his reason and conscience, in defiance of their will. 
His championship of the American cause still further 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

estranged him from this valuable constituency. It is 
true he addressed the sheriffs of Bristol in an impassioned 
and closely reasoned letter in .1777 on behalf of the 
soundness of his views; and in 1780 he spoke to the 
electors of Bristol words on the subject of true free- 
dom, that should have won their renewed allegiance. 
But their hearts were hardened, and Burke cheerfully 
gave place to a more docile representative. 

Burke's experience as an orator was full of contradic- 
tions. The most obvious of these was that while the 
greatness of a speech was conceded, the due effect was 
scarcely ever gained. Some of his most powerful ad- 
dresses were ignored. The Speech on Conciliation^ 
which is considered on the whole his greatest, utterly 
failed to secure its legislative object. The explanation 
of this contradiction is to be found largely in the prej- 
udice of his audience. 

But even to those who listened with sympathy to 
Burke's speeches there was no such degree of satisfaction 
as the reading of them afterwards afforded. This fact 
seems to indicate that as essays they are greater than 
as orations. And from the practical point of view there 
is much justice in this conclusion at first. But another 
item must be taken into account. Burke's delivery was 
exceedingly rapid. So much so that none but a great 
political philosopher like himself could have compre- 
hended the intricacies of his discourse as he delivered 
it ; and we have no report from any such philosopher. 
The witnesses are upon the whole, but second-rate ob- 
servers. They lay far more stress upon the inevitable 
faults of manner in Burke's delivery than upon the pas- 
sionate sincerity with which his words w^ere uttered. It 



INTRODUCTION. xxi 

is his harsh voice, his brogue, his awkward gestures, his 
overearnest shaking of the head, and his facial contor- 
tions which to them stand for Burke's oratory. No 
doubt also they felt called upon to explain to themselves 
as they listened, why it was that Burke's oratory was un- 
popular, and so they hit upon every mannerism their 
shallow criticism could detect. 

Another strange fact about Burke as an orator is that 
while discoursing with 'a breadth of mind and hberality 
of policy which few statesmen have equaled, he would 
exhibit a personal irritation entirely out of character with 
his sentiments. This peculiarity was largely constitu- 
tional, but was fostered by harrassing debt, by failure in 
projects into which he had thrown his grandest efforts, 
and by a sense of the inexorable personal and party prej- 
udice against which he had to fight with unfit weapons, 
until it became at times a painful thing even to his friends 
to observe his frantic utterance, in the heat of extempore 
debate. Yet forgetting these petty failings we can see 
in Burke, a ready and skilful disputant, whose knowl- 
edge was infinitely accurate and varied, and who, in a 
parliament more worthy of his presence, would have 
towered like a god among heroes. 

The real power of Burke's oratory is shown in its 
effect upon the generations who have followed him. 
One after another their great statesmen have led the way 
to victory for one or another of Burke's ideas. For three- 
quarters of a century his works have been the text-book 
of British statesmen and economists. Our noblest 
Americans have formed their public characters upon his 
ideal. Almost every advance in political reform was 
prophesied in his principles of government, and so 



xxii INTRODUCTION. 

rapidly has his philosophy become a common possession 
that we find it hard to realize the newness of many posi- 
tions when he took them in the eighteenth century. 

Notwithstanding all this, it is doubtful whether the 
oratory of Burke, if he could now share in the delibera- 
tions of our American Congress, would command its full 
measure of respect. It is characteristic of the mind of 
man to accept only a little of what he hears, especially 
if that which is offered be out of harmony with his own 
lines of thought and interest. No appeal, however 
eloquent, however sane, however persistent, will take 
away the settled prejudices of the mass of mankind, till 
some other influence has first broken through the shell 
of indifl"erence. This fact does not argue against the 
employment of every persuasive art, or detract from the 
dignity of argumentative oratory. But it does help to 
explain why Burke, who perhaps surpassed every othtjr 
man in the list of English orators, apparently worked in 
vain. 

The Speech on Conciliation. 

It was of Nature that Emerson said, ''the eye sees 
what the eye brings with it the power of seeing." But 
it is equally true of a great work of art, that the beauty 
and value of it to a student are to be measured only by 
the student's appreciation. We start out with no mean 
standard when we aim to understand why the greatest 
critics have looked upon this as a great speech, and to 
see for ourselves what their eyes had power to see. 
Their judgment and their enjoyment mean but little to 
us, if we cannot, guided by them, judge and enjoy for 
ourselves. 



INTRODUCTION. xxiii 

A fundamental criticism on Burke as a political writer 
has been passed by Matthew Arnold in the brief sen- 
tence, '' What makes Burke stand out so splendidly 
among politicians is that he treats politics with his 
thought and imagination." The Speech 07i Conciliation 
is a great political document and a classic oration, be- 
cause Burke treated the questions regarding America 
" with his thought and imagination." 

Burke never wearied of expressing disapproval of 
theorists, but he appealed constantly to the deep truths of 
statecraft, constantly correcting his views by reference to 
specific examples in history and to plain facts of human 
nature. His works contain the results of profound re- 
search in every field of learning, presented in an easy 
continuity, as if to permit the reader to live through 
Burke's mental processes as he reads. The habit of 
thorough examination of facts and application of princi- 
ples grows unconsciously, and one is stimulated to think 
in spite of himself. 

But the secret of Burke's suggestiveness is not his 
philosophy alone. Others have thought deeply and 
logically without impregnating the minds of their readers 
with their scholarly spirit. Burke vivifies his facts with 
imagination. Even commercial statistics are made to 
seem alive. And where an opportunity presents itself, 
the art of a poet is drawn upon to embellish his posi- 
tion, and render it attractive. How easily a mere 
debater could have passed by the whale-fisheries of 
New England with a statement of the bare facts of its 
big areas, its stupendous tonnage, and its importance to 
English trade. But Burke treats the fishermen with his 
imagination. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION. 

" Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, 
and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of 
Hudson Bay and Davis Strait, whilst we are looking for them be- 
neath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the 
opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and 
engaged under the frozen serpent of the south, Falkland Island, 
, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of 
national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress 
of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more dis- 
couraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. 
We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the 
harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pur- 
sue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but 
what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to 
their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity 
of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enter- 
prise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the 
extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people — a people 
who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened 
into the bone of manhood." 

The clear vision, of which Arnold spoke, peers into the 
history of Wales under penal regulation, and brings forth 
pictures like this. 

" I admit it fully ; and pray add likewise to these precedents, 
that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an incubus ; that it 
was an unprofitable and oppressive burden ; and that an English- 
man traveling in that country could not go six yards from the high- 
road without being murdered." 

It peers into the geography of America and presents 
the colonists in the very act of migration. 

" If you drive the people from one place, they will carry on their 
annual tillage and remove with their flocks and herds to another. 
, . . Already they have topped the Appalachian mountains. 



INTRODUCTION. xxv 

From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one vast, 
rich, level meadow ; a square of five hundred miles." 

It peers into the very hearts of the Americans and sym- 
pathizes with their passionate love of freedom, with their 
rehgious prejudices, their social tendencies ; and it sees 
the English kinship with these passions as a living truth. 
With what deadly vividness is this set forth before those 
unseeing eyes of the British House of Commons ! 

" We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people and 
persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose 
veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which 
they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition ; 
your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest 
person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery." 

Upon the ill-omened projects of tyranny it looks with 
the eye of scornful condemnation. Burke is speaking of 
the plan to free the slaves that they may fight against their 
masters. 

" An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, 
shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry 
into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hun- 
dred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea cap- 
tain attempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation of 
liberty and to advertise his sale of slaves." 

The imaginative quality of these passages loses by the 
fact of quotation. In their places, set in the system of 
Burke's thought, these five and a hundred others con- 
tribute to that suggestiveness, which every one must dis- 
cover in every page of the oration. They come from an 
exercise of the imagination, and often produce the effect 
of great poetry. There is nothing in them of the license 



X X V i INTR ODUCTION. 

of mere irresponsible fancy; every image is tempered 
into truth, and subjected to the law of reason, but it 
spurs and urges on the reader's mind. Page after page 
passes before us, and by some fascination like that which 
draws the eye from arch and spire of a great cathedral to 
view from within ''storied window and fretted vault," 
we feel ourselves seized upon by the passion of the orator, 
and swept out of our common mood into new relations to 
his theme. We share his reverence for the subject, his 
love of justice and the constitution, his faith in clemency, 
and his hatred of tyranny and fraud. 

But the speech is by no means all in this lofty vein. 
Mr. Bhss Perry says, ''Burke could always be gorgeous 
when he chose, and severe when he must." There is 
little of the Speech on Conciliation that may justly 
be called gorgeous in style ; but there is no dearth of 
passages of severe prose. The oration is of the class 
argumentative or deliberative. There are few words in 
the whole speech which do not, directly or indirectly, 
lead towards conciliation and away from tyranny. The 
tone of the speech is conciliatory. The Speech on Tax- 
ation in America which Burke delivered almost a year 
earlier, is quite of another type in this respect. That, 
says Goodrich, " was in a strain of incessant attack, full 
of the keenest sarcasm, and shaped from beginning to 
end for the purpose of putting down the ministry." But 
in the present oration we have balanced judgment, nice 
attention to the means of persuasion, a spirit of philan- 
thropic administration of colonial affairs as a trust re- 
posed in Parliament. Combined with all these traits, is 
a body of argument which is at the same time detailed 
and extensive, systematic and powerful. 



INTRODUCTION. xxvii 

The purpose is twofold. I^_c onsists in gen eral of an 
effort to convince the Ho use o fjthe need of serious and 
just treatment of the American colonists, by emphasiz- 
ing the magnitude of American commerce, and the 
dignity and energy of American character. His thought 
runs in this channel : '' The abuse of America arises from 
carelessness and ignorance ; if I can prove that America 
is great and respectable in material importance and in 
character, I shall gain at least a new and earnest attitude 
from the House." It is here that he introduces his elabo- 
rate exposition of American commerce, agriculture, and 
fisheries, and of the American spirit of liberty arising 
from six causes, every one of which is separately defined 
and argued. 

Following this effort to produce a just attitude of mind 
towards the American question, Burke introduces what 
is called an argument by exclusion, to show that in 
the light of the facts just adduced, there is only one 
proper way in which to treat America. An enumeration 
of all the proposed courses of action is made ; one after 
the other the various modes of procedure are proved im- 
practicable, until only one is left. Then comes the posi- 
tive demonstration of the justice of this conclusion. The 
great body of the speech, from paragraph sixty-five to 
paragraph one hundred and seventeen, is devoted to 
showing how a conciliatory pohcy would operate favor- 
ably upon America. Within these limits, the most note- 
worthy type of argumentation is the appeal to the ex- 
amples of four other provinces of England. This is 
called argument by historical analogy. As an. argument 
by exclusion is of no value unless the enumeration of 
possibilities be complete, and the cancellation of the un- 



xxviii INTRODUCTION. 

wise, just ; so an argument from historical analogy is 
misleading unless the cases considered be parallel in 
their essential conditions, and the conclusion drawn from 
the one shown to be justly applicable to the other. A 
study of the arguments of Burke ought to demonstrate 
both the truth of his inferences and the fulness and in- 
genuity of reasoning by which he reaches them. 

To touch upon Burke's art of reasoning is to open a 
subject of indefinite research, but it may be well to lay 
the stress of brief comment upon three of its subdi- 
visions. 

The enforcement of an argument is invariably marked 
by a careful preparation, a graceful introduction, a state- 
ment and restatement of the question, and a laying of 
emphasis upon the essential point. This effect of em- 
phasis is gained in various ways, some of them depend- 
ent upon the style of expression and too subtle to be classi- 
fied ; but a favorite method is the denial of the opposite. 
This may in itself require some amplification, or it may 
consist in a flash of light thrown upon the absurdity to 
which his enemy's position is reduced. Other modes of 
enforcement, such as straightforward illustration, exposi- 
tion of principles involved, and the hundred arts of style, 
may form a most interesting topic for original work. 
Some suggestions appear later in this introduction but the 
individual insight is the best worker in this field, as in 
others. 

In the art of persuasion, Burke falls far short of most 
great orators. His temper was too uncompromising and 
his attitude too impersonal. He was not naturally tact- 
ful in expression, and he wearied his audience with the 
very wealth of his knowledge. His arts were those of a 



INTR OD UCTION, xxix 

prophet, a scholar, a lecturer, rather than of a medium 
of sympathy between righteousness, intelligence and 
economy, and the average man. To men already pos- 
sessed by the spirit of these things he speaks with un- 
measured felicity, but character and intelligence were 
not his audience ; and one of the prime demands upon 
an orator is to adjust his hearers and his speech. Chat- 
ham did it. Fox did it, Sheridan did it — all in that same 
Parliament of inert and biased minds which the grand- 
est conceptions and the most eloquent periods of the 
Speech on Conciliation failed to move. 

When we observed above Burke's habit of denying 
the opposite of a position which he wished to sustain, 
we anticipated one of his very important means of refu- 
tation. From beginning to end the speech is character- 
ized by brief pieces of refutation after this fashion, inter- 
spersed among the divisions of direct debate. For ex- 
ample, there is that remarkable digression against 
the use of force, brought in in the midst of a dis- 
cussion of the circumstances and character of the 
colonists. In paragraphs sixty-six to seventy-six Burke 
is occupied with refuting the arguments bearing upon 
England's legal right to tax the colonies and the danger 
of further demands if the revenue laws be relaxed. 
Paragraphs ninety-five, ninety-eight and one hundred 
and four illustrate the same principle. But the great 
body of refutation occurs where it would be expected, in 
paragraphs one hundred and eighteen to one hundred 
and thirty-six, where the chief object is after all only an 
elaboration of the principle already cited. Burke can- 
not in the nature of things extensively devote himself to 
answering arguments against his own plan, so he follows 



XXX INTRODUCTION. 

the method of attacking the tacit arguments imphed in 
the existence of Lord North's propositions. By down- 
right ridicule, audacious rebuke, or piercing analysis, he 
exhibits the unstatesraanlike policy of the leading foe to 
conciliation. Flank movements outwit North's shrewd 
but unprincipled strategy. While seeming to yield a 
point gracefully to his opponents, he scores two for him- 
self. Nothing is more characteristic of Burke than a re- 
statement, with apparent liberality, of some tenet of the 
oppressors, which is no sooner submitted to this test than 
it appears honeycombed with meanness or with error. 

" Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of the 
colonies. They complain that they are taxed without their con- 
sent : you answer that you will fix the sum at which they shall be 
taxed. That is, you give them the very grievance for the remedy. 
You tell them, indeed, that you will leave the mode to tkemselves. 
I really beg pardon; it gives me pain to mention it; but you must 
be sensible that you will not perform this part of the compact. For 
suppose the colonies were to lay the duties which furnished their 
contingent upon the importation of your manufactures, you know 
you would never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that 
you would not suffer many other modes of taxation. So that when 
you come to explain yourself, it will be found that you will neither 
leave to themselves the quantum nor the mode ; nor indeed any- 
thing. The whole is delusion from one end to the other." 

Though this paragraph is the last passage we shall in- 
sert here, as means of illustrating Burke's mode of argu- 
mentation, let it be remembered that in our discussion of 
this theme we have touched but upon its very surface. 
Even if our object has been fully attained, we have only 
suggested ways of looking into it. No one knows any- 
thing of Burke's power in this direction, until he has 
made the speech, as a whole, part of his own mental life; 



INTRODUCTION. xxxi 

SO that it thinks itself over in his mind, as an organic 
system of political philosophy. It should of itself work 
in the reasoning faculties, with intense and increasing 
energy, towards an ideal conception of government in 
which the weak, the distant, and the loyal, are justly 
treated by the strong, the central and the generous. It is 
for this kind of government that Burke was pleading, and 
to the true reader he pleads for the same to-day. 

The language in which this system is set forth is diffi- 
cult. But its difficulty is almost solely due to the char- 
acter of the thinking. Wherever the thought is plain the 
language is easy, and it is even rendered, by the genius 
of Burke, somewhat simple even in passages of reasoning 
the most complex. But when an earnest, wide-awake 
mind has once begun to grapple with the problems in the 
thought and imagination of the speech, there is no fur- 
ther consciousness of obstacles in the way of understand- 
ing special words or phrases. The whole effort of such a 
student is directed, as it should be, towards seeing Burke 
in his speech, ^' alive and passionate." 

Incidentally, many things will catch his eye, as he 
reads. For example, he will be impressed with the ele- 
gance of Burke's style. There is no vulgar common- 
place, no appeal to cheap applause, no hot invective. 
An air of dignity pervades his utterance ; his manner is 
that of a ' ' gentleman of the old school. ' ' 

" Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and means of this 
substitute to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even 
obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imagi- 
nary commonwealths, not to the Republic of Plato, not to the 
Utopia of More, not to the Oceana of Harrington, It is before 
me, it is ^.t my feet, — 



xxxii INTRODUCTION. 

' And the rude swain 
Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon.' " 

It is as part of this poised and high-bred manner that 
we interpret those quaint apologies and deprecations, 
those compliments and innuendoes which enliven the page. 

But there is a deeper explanation of the elegance of 
Burke's style. His spirit is high. Grandeur is native to 
him ; it breathes forth from his lips as unconsciously as 
goodness welled from his heart. And those full periods, 
perfect in continuity, roll off with a rhythm which can- 
not but be sustained, because it is the rhythm of the 
thought or emotion itself. Burke's phrasing is as rotund, 
his turns of thought as quick and varied, as those of 
Johnson at his best, and for much the same reason. 
Both were great men speaking from their hearts, in an 
age which had not yet chastened the poetry out of daily 
speech. The passage which best illustrates these quali- 
ties is too long to quote here. But it will never be 
thought too long to read, — paragraphs one hundred and 
twenty-six to one hundred and twenty-eight, beginning, 
'* For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, 
trade or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British 
constitution. ' ' 

Goodrich makes a substantial quotation from Burke 
himself when he states Burke's idea of a truly fine sen- 
tence, — " It consists in a union of thought, feeling and 
'imagery — of a striking truth and a corresponding senti- 
ment, rendered doubly striking by the force and beauty 
of figurative language." 

From a writer with such an ideal we should expect to 
find what we do find, sentences rich in ornament. 



INTRODUCTION. xxxiii 

Burke's style is distinctly more elaborate than that of the 
best orators of our modern school, and his standards of 
argumentative language are quite unlike those laid down 
in our art of debate. He differs widely from several of 
the great speakers of his own day in these respects. But 
after his kind he is incomparable, and it is the secrets of 
his style we are exploring. 

Of kindred figures, irony is Burke's favorite. He oc- 
casionally towers into sarcasm, but his natural resort is to 
plain truth half veiled in formal compliment. In para- 
graph ten he is speaking of the disappointing simplicity of 
his plan for conciliation. 

" There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has noth- 
ing of the splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon 
your table by the noble lord in the blue ribbon. It does not pro- 
pose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will re- 
quire the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the 
peace amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction 
of finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by 
bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer, and 
determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of alge- 
bra to equalize and settle." 

Frequent as such passages are they are far outnumbered 
by the bold, straightforward challenges with which he 
brings up his opponents. The figures, upon which he or- 
dinarily depends are the simple but suggestive metaphor 
and simile, with an occasional hyperbole to heighten 
effect, and interrogation to vary the mode of attack. 
The last half of paragraph sixty-six illustrates all these turns 
of expression in a single passage, together with antithesis, 
parodox, and one of the finest examples of repetition, in 
the speech. As an example of litotes, not the least valu- 



xxxiv INTR OD UCTION. 

able figure in debate, observe the close of paragraph four ; 
it is the inevitable balance of his ironical mood in the 
opening lines of the same paragraph. Both irony and 
litotes involve self-control in the speaker. 

" Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, dur- 
ing this interval, more frequent changes in their sentiments and 
their conduct than could be justified in a particular person upon 
the contracted scale of private information. But though I do not 
hazard anything approaching to a censure on the motives of former 
Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted, — that 
under them the state of America has been kept in continual agita- 
tion. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, 
if it did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of 
the distemper ; until, by a variety of experiments, that important 
country has been brought into her present situation, — a situation 
which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely 
know how to comprehend in the terms of any description." 

Before passing on to notice another group of orna- 
ments in the style of Burke we must gather a somewhat 
more definite idea of his use of metaphor. Ordinarily 
the metaphors in the Speech on Conciliation are homely 
and brief, merely having the effect of strength, bigness, 
or some other quality in a heightened degree. Such are 
the expressions, — *^ population shoots," ''to wrest from 
them by force or shuffle from them by chicane," ''this 
loosening of all ties and this concussion of all established 
opinions." Metaphors of this type are to be found on 
every page. But there are in the speech, contributing 
to it 'no small share of its total beauty and power, several 
of a higher type — offspring of a poetic imagination. The 
most obvious example is the twenty-fifth paragraph, in 
which Burke pictures the sixty-eight years' change in 
America as a revelation to Lord Bathurst. It has the 



INTRODUCTION. xxxv 

imaginative if not the sympathetic eloquence of Webster's 
apostrophe to Lafayette. But, interesting as this is, a more 
appropriate example is the figure of the wine-press in para- 
graph one hundred and thirty-three, — more appropriate be- 
cause more in the direct current of argumentative thought, 
while the other is to some extent an episode. 

" Most may be taken where most is accumulated. And what is 
the soil or climate where experience has not uniformly proved that 
the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight 
of its own rich luxuriance, has ever run with a more copious stream 
of revenue than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed 
indigence by the straining of all the politic machinery in the 
world ? " 

Aside from typical figures of speech, there is an ele- 
ment of the poetic in Burke's style which is not less note- 
worthy because it is pervasive, and incapable of scientific 
analysis. What I refer to is a certain enrichment of his 
language with treasures from his reading. Sometimes 
this takes the form of quotation, but more commonly of 
a passing allusion, suggested rather than made, to some 
cherished phrase, which not only expresses the desired 
thought, but conveys with it the subdued charm of as- 
sociation. Such passages may well be thought the great- 
est beauty of the speech, none the less because they can 
be fully appreciated only by those readers to whom 
the half-quoted phrases are familiar. Freedom is a 
** common blessing, and as broad and general as the 
air"; ''Clouds indeed and darkness rest upon the 
future"; "When the day-star of the English constitu- 
tion had arisen in their hearts" ; ''The immense, ever- 
growing, eternal debt which is due to generous govern- 
ment from protected freedom " ; " These are ties which, 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION. 

though light as air, are as strong as hnks of kon." It is 
in such rich fragments as these from Shakespeare, Milton, 
the Bible, that Burke naturally expresses himself, occa- 
sionally giving from these sources or from his favorite 
Latin poets, a more literal quotation. His eloquent 
Siirsimi corda is drawn from the Roman Catholic 
liturgy, while from the Philadelphia Address to Great 
Britain echoes that telling phrase '' the former unsus- 
pecting confidence in the mother country." The 
legends of the Minotaur and of the Roman daughter 
contribute to his descriptions, picturesque events in his- 
tory afford him illustrations, while nothing satisfies the 
demand of his critical imagination but the most definite 
and accurate details. The mountains are Appalachia^iy 
the outlaws are English Tartars ; it is Angola negroes 
whom the Guinea captain seeks to import, into Virginia 
and Carolina. Payne has made a very happy illustra- 
tion of this poetic quality of Burke's style, by quoting 
the following passages side by side : 

" In large bodies the circula- " In all the despotisms of the 
tion of power must be less vigor- East it has been observed that 
ous at the extremities. • Nature the further any part of, the em- 
has said it. The Turk cannot pire is removed from the cap- 
govern Egypt and Arabia and ital the more do its inhabitants 
Kurdistan as he governs Thrace; enjoy some sort of rights and 
nor has he the same dominion privileges ; the more ineffica- 
in Crimea and Algiers which he cious is the power of the mon- 
has at Brusa and Smyrna. Des- arch; and the more feeble and 
potism itself is obliged to truck easily decayed is the organiza- 
and huckster. The Sultan gets tion of the government." — In- 
such obedience as he can. — quiry into the Colonial Policy 
Page 25. of the European Powers, by 

Lord Biougham. 



INTRODUCTION. xxxvii 

''This particularizing style is the essence of poetry; 
and in prose it is impossible not to be struck with the 
energy which it produces. Brougham's passage is excel- 
lent in its way; but it pales before the flashing lights of 
Burke's sentences." ^ 

But though the beauties of Burke's style are the beau- 
ties of poetry, his prose is a true prose, and has the ex- 
cellences of prose. There is no need to dwell upon the 
means by which Burke perfects the sequence of sentences 
and paragraphs, or the nice ratio between theme and am- 
plification, or the variety and force of his phrases, or the 
accuracy and vigor of his vocabulary. These things are 
self-evident. It may be well however to touch upon one 
virtue of his prose language, which is possessed in equal 
perfection by few orators. I mean his ingenuity in 
neatly expressing what would naturally have been con- 
sidered inexpressible except in many and perhaps awk- 
ward words. I will cite several examples of this skilful 
compression, though they lose their keenest point when 
isolated: "Considering force not as an odious, but a 
feeble instrument" (§31); ''Terror is not always the 
effect of force, and an armament is not a victory " 
(§ ZZ)\ **Will it not teach them that the government 
against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to high 
treason is a government to which submission is equivalent 
to slavery?" (§ 60); "But courts incommodiously sit- 
uated in effect deny justice ; and a court partaking in 
the fruits of its own condemnation is a robber" (§ 116). 

To be convinced with a discouraging degree of 
thoroughness that these passages are not thrown off by 

* Payne's comment, Burke's Select IVorks, I., xl. 



jcxxviii INTRODUCTION. 

an average literary gift, one need but attempt to para- 
phrase them in their various contexts. Yet Burke seeks 
neither this virtue nor any of the more ornate habits of 
expression in a spirit of pedantry. Every element of his 
style seems to have come at the call of his general pur- 
pose, — a purpose, not in itself literary, but voicing itself 
through the operation of literary genius in extraordinary 
beauty and vigor of style. 

The student's total impression of Burke's English is 
that it not only serves the orator's conscious purpose, 
furthering with sincerity and vividness the granting of 
constitutional freedom to America ; it will be felt that to 
the furthest limit of thought or imagination, — of exposi- 
tion, enforcement, summary, refutation, of description, 
illustration, or appeal, — the subserviency of his style is 
perfect and unconscious. It is part of the man. It is as 
supple as the Arab horse to his master's hand ; and like 
that, while it obeys, it carries him on to where new obe- 
dience is exacted. Burke habitually relies upon the cer- 
tainty with which the right words will appear and fall 
harmoniously into their right places. To share in the 
satisfactions of that confidence is fully to enjoy the style 
of Burke, and enjoyment of Burke's, style is by no means 
the least important end to which work on this oration 
should contribute. 



A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

COVERING THE LIFE OF BURKE AND SUCH HISTORY AND 
LITERATURE AS BEAR SPECIAL RELATION TO HIS LIFE- 
WORK OR TO HIS SPEECH ON CONCILIATION. 

1651-1663. Various Navigation Acts, limiting Ameri- 
can carrying-trade. 

1672-1764. Other Trade Laws, damaging to colonial 
commerce or manufactures. 
1729. Burke born in Dublin. 

1748. Graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. 

1 749. Bolingbroke : Idea of a Patriot King. 
Montesquieu : Esprit des Lois. 

1750. Burke arrived in London. 

1754. Mutiny Act extended to the Colonies. 

1755. French and Indian War. 

1756. Vindication of Natural Society. 
Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. 
Burke married to Jane Nugent. 

1757. Supremacy of Enghsh Power in India. 
Account of European Settlements in 

America. 
Abridgement of the History of England. 

1758. Richard Burke born. 

1759. Capture of Quebec. 
Annual Register, Vol. I. 
Burke Secretary to Hamilton. 

xxxix 



xl A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

1760. Accession of George Third. 

1 761. Burke in Ireland. 

Blow struck at colonial judiciary. 

1762. Whiteboy outbreak. 
Rousseau : Contrat Social. 

1763. Grenville Ministry. 
Peace of Paris. 

1764. Burke a Member of '' The Club." 
Sugar Tax. 

1765. Stamp Act. 
Rockingham Ministry. 

Burke Secretary to Rockingham. 
Enters Parliament from Wendover. 
Colonial Congress, at New York. 
Blackstone : Commentaries. 

1766. Repeal of Stamp Act. 
Chatham Ministry. 
Lessing : Laocoon. 

1767. Grafton Ministry. 

1768. Burke purchases Beaconsfield. 

1769. Tea Tax affirmed. 
Transportation Act affirmed. 
Junius : first Letter. 

Observations 071 the present State of the Nation. 

1770. Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Dis- 

contents. 
Boston Massacre. 
North Ministry. 

1 77 1. Burke Agent for New York. 
Parliamentary Debates reported. 

1773. Boston Tea Party. 
Burke visits France. 



A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. xli 

1774- Speech on American Taxation. 
Burke member for Bristol. 
Boston Port Bill. 
Act for trial of British Soldiers. 
' Abrogation of Charter of Massachusetts. 
First Continental Congress at Philadelphia. 
Colonial Militia organized. 
Tucker : The Trice Interest of Britain. 

1775. *' Penal Bill" introduced by Lord North, 

Feb. 10. 

'<■ Project " introduced by Lord North, Feb. 27. 

Johnson : Taxation no Tyranny. 

Penal Bill passed by the Lords, Mar. 21. 

Speech on Conciliation , Mar. 22. 

Battles of Lexington and Concord. 

Penal Bill passed, May 8. 

Continental Congress rejects Lord North's proj- 
ect. May 10. 

Battle of Bunker Hill. 

1776. Declaration of Independence. 
Paine : Common Sense. 

Smith : The Wealth of Nations. 

1777. Address to the King. 

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. 
Surrender of Burgoyne. 

1780. Speech on Economical Reform. 
Lord George Gordon Riots. 

1 78 1. Burke Member for Malton. 
Surrender of Cornwallis. 

1782. Second Rockingham Ministry. 
Burke Paymaster of the Forces. 
Shelburne Ministry. 



xlii A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

1783. Coalition Ministry. 
Speech on the India Bill. 

1 784. Pitt Ministry. 

1785. Speech on the Nabob of Arcofs Debts. 

1786. Opening of the Trial of Hastings. 

1789. French Revolution. 
Washington's Administration. 

1790. Reflections on the French Revolution. 

1 791. Alienation of Burke from his friends. 

Letter to a member of the National Assembly. 
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. 
Thoughts on French Affairs. 

1792. Paine: Rights of Ma?i. 
Paine : Age of Reason. 

1793. Observations on the Conduct of the Ministry. 
Execution of Louis Sixteenth. 

Reign of Terror. 

France declares War against Holland, Spain and 

England. 
Remarks on the Policy of the Allies. 

1794. Bonaparte drives the British from Toulon. 
Close of the trial of Hastings. 

Burke retires from Parliament. 
Richard Burke dies. 

1795. Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. 
Letter to a Noble Lord. 

1 796. Letters on a Regicide Peace. 
1797- John Adams's Administration. 

Burke dies. 
1809. Mrs. Burke dies. 



SPEECH 



OF 



EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. 



ON 



Moving his Resolutions 



FOR 



Conciliation with the Colonies 



March 22, 1775 



THE SECOND EDITION 



LONDON 
PRINTED FOR J. DODSLEY, IN PALL-MALL 

MDCCLXXV 



SPEECH 

ON 

CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 

/. I HOPE, Sir, that notwithstanding the austeri ty of 
the Chair, your good nature will incline you to some de- 
gree of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not 
think it unnatural that those who have an object depend- 

5 ing which strongly engages their hopes and fears should 
be' somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into 
the House, full of anxiety about the event of my motion, 
I found, to my infinite surprise, that the grand pgj^l bill 
by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sus- 

lo tenance of America is to be returned to us from the other 
House. I do confess, I could not help looking on this 
event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of 
providential favor by which we are put once more in pos- 
session of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very 

15 questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. 
By the return of this bill, which seemed to have taken its 
flight forever, we are at this very instant nearly as free to 
choose a plan for our American government as we were 
on the Jijrst day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the 

20 side of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless 
we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mix- 
ture of (^ercipn and restrain t. We are therefore called 
upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to 

I 



2 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

attend to America ; to attend to the whole of it together ; 
and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care 
and calmness. 

2. Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so 
on this side of the grave. When I first had the honor of 5 
a seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed 
themselves upon us as the most important and most deli- 
cate object of parliamentary attention. My little share in 
this great dehberation oppressed me. I found myself a 
partaker in a very high trust ; and having no sort of 10 
reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for 
the proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take 
more than common pains to instruct myself in everything 
which relates to our colonies. I was not less under the 
necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the gen- 15 
eral policy of the British Empire. Something of this sort 
seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so vast a 
fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concejajrg my 
thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from be- 
ing blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. 20 
I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh prin- 
ciples to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive 
from America. 

J. At that period I had the fortune to find myself in 
perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House. 25 
Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with 
the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I 
have continued ever since, without the least deviation, in 
my original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an 
obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious adher- 30 
ence to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your 
equity to judge. 






THE CRISIS. 



' ^. Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of ob- 
, jects, made, during this interval, more frequent changes 
in their sentiments and their conduct than could be justi- 
fied in a particular person upon the contracted scale of 
5 private information. But though I do not hazard any- 
thing approaching to a censure on the motives of former 
Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted, 
— that under them the state of America has been kept in 
continual agitation. Everything administered as remedy 

lo to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least 
followed by, an heightening of the distemper ; until by a 
variety of experiments that important country has been 
brought into her present situation — a situation which I 
will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely 

15 know how to comprehend in the terms of any de- 
scription. 

5. In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning 
of the session. About that time a worthy member, of 
great parliamentary experience, who in the year 1766 

20 filled the Chair of the American Committee with much 
ability, took me aside and, lamenting the present aspect 
of our politics, told me things were come to such a pass 
that our former methods of proceeding in the House 
would be no longer tolerated ; that the public tribunal 

25 (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposi- 
tion) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual 
severity ; that the very vicissitudes and shiftings of min- 
isterial measures, instead of convicting their authors of 
inconstancy and want of system, would be taken as an 

30 occasion of charging us with a predetermined discontent 
which nothing could satisfy, whilst we accused every 
measure of vigor as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as 



4 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

weak and irresolute. The public, he said, would not 
have patience to see us play the game out with our ad- 
versaries ; we must produce our hand : it would be ex- 
pected that those who for many years had been active in 
such affairs should show that they had formed some clear 5 
and decided idea of the principles of colony government ; 
and were capable of drawing out something like a plat- 
form of the ground which might be laid for future and 
permanent tranquillity. 

6. I felt the truth of what my honorable friend repre- 10 
sented ; but I felt my situation too. His application 
might have been made with far greater propriety to many 
other gentlemen. No man was indeed ever better dis- 
posed, or worse qualified, for such an undertaking than 
myself. Though I gave so far into his opinion that I im- 15 
mediately threw my thoughts into a sort of parliamentary 
form, I was by no means equally ready to produce them. 
It generally argues some degree of natural impotence of 
mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard 
plans of government, except from a seat of authority. 20 
Propositions are made, not only ineffectually, but some- 
what disreputably, when the minds of men are not prop- 
erly disposed for their reception ; and for my part, I am 
not ambitious of ridicule, not absolutely a candidate for 
disgrace. ■ 25 

7. Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in 
J^ general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper 

government, nor of any politics in which the plan is to 
be wholly separated from the execution. But when I 
saw that anger and violence prevailed every day more 30 
and more, and that things were hastening towards an 
incutable alienation of our colonies, I confess my caution 



-^ 



BURKE'S PROPOSITION. 5 

gave way. I felt this as one of those few moments in 
which decorum yields to a higher duty. Public calamity 
is a mighty leveller ; and there are occasions when any, 
even the slightest, chance of doing good must be laid 

5 hold on, even by the most inconsiderable person. 

S. To restore order and repose to an empire so great 
and so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an under- 
taking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius 
and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest under- 

10 standing. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, 
by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, 
some confidence from what in other circumstances usually 
produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the 
idea of my own insignificance. For judging of what you 

15 are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you 
would not reject a reasonable proposition, because it had 
nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other 
hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, 
natural or adventitious, I was very sure that if my 

20 proposition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly 
conceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior 
to it, of power to awe, dazzle or delude you. You 
will see it just as it is, and you will treat it just as it 
deserves. 

25 9. The proposition is peace. Not peace through 
the medium of war ; not peace to be hunted through the 
labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations ; not peace 
to arise out of universal discord fomented from principle 
in all parts of the empire ; not peace to depend on the 

30 juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the 
precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex 
government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural 



6 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in 
the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. 
I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and 
by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the 
colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satis- 5 
faction to your people \ and (far from a scheme of ruling 
by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same 
act and by the bond of the very same interest which 
reconciles them to British government. 

10. My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever 10 
has been the parent of confusion ; and ever will be so, as 
long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which 
is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely 
detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the 
government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is 15 
an healing and cementing principle. My plan, there- 
\ fore, being formed upon the most simple grounds 

imaginable, may disappoint some people when they hear 
it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of 
curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivat- 20 
ing in it. It has nothing of the splendor of the project 
which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble 
lord in the blue ribbon. It does not propose to fill your 
lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require 
the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep 25 
the peace amongst them. It does not institute a mag- 
nificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces 
come to general ransom by bidding against each other, 
until you knock down the hammer, and determine a 
proportion of payments beyond all the powers of algebra 30 
to equalize and settle. 

/ / . The plan which I shall presume to suggest 



ALL DESIRE CONCILIATION. 7 

derives, however, one great advantage from the propo- 
sition and registry of that noble lord's project. The 
idea of conciliation is admissible. First, the House in 
accepting the resolution moved by the noble lord has 
5 admitted, notwithstanding the menacing front of our 
address, notwithstanding our heavy bill of pains and 
penalties, that we do not think ourselves precluded from 
all ideas of free grace and bounty. 

12. The House has gone farther : it has declared 

10 conciliation admissible, previous to any submission on 
the part of America. It has even shot a good deal 
beyond that mark, and has admitted that the complaints 
of our former mode of exerting the right of taxation were 
not wholly unfounded. That right thus exerted is 

15 allowed to have something reprehensible in it, something 
unwise or something grievous ; since, in the midst of our 
heat and resentment, we t)f ourselves have proposed a 
capital alteration; and, in order to get rid of what 
seemed so very exceptionable, have instituted a mode 

20 that is altogether new, — one that is, indeed, wholly 
alien from all the ancient methods and forms of Par- 
liament. 

l^. The principle of this proceeding is large enough 
for my purpose. The means proposed by the noble lord 

25 for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are 
very indifferently suited to the end; and this I shall 
endeavor to show you before I sit down. But, for the 
present, I take my ground on the admitted principle. I 
mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation ; and 

30 where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation 
does in a manner always imply concession on the one 
part or on the o^her, In this state of things I make ng 



8 ON CONCILIA TION WITH AMERICA. 

difficulty in affirming that the proposal ought to originate 
from us. Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, 
either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to 
exert itself. The superior power may offer peace with 
honor and with safety. Such an offer from such a power 5 
will be attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions 
of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a 
one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior ; 
and he loses forever that time and those chances which, 
as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources 10 
of all inferior power. 

/^. The capital leading questions on which you must 
this day decide are these two : first, whether you ought 
to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought 
to be. On the first of these questions we have gained 15 
(as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) 
some ground. But I am sensible that a good deal more 
is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to deter- 
mine both on the one and the other of these great ques- 
tions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be 20 
necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the 
peculiar circumstances of the object which we have be- 
fore us : because after all our struggle, whether we will 
or not, we must govern America according to that nature 
and to those circumstances, and not according to our 25 
own imaginations, not according to abstract ideas of 
right ; by no means according to mere general theories 
of government, the resort to which appears to me in our 
present situation no better than arrant trifling. I shall 
therefore endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you 30 
some of the most material of these circumstances in as 
full arid as clear a manper as I am able to state them. 



7'HE POPULATION OF AMERICA.- 9 

l^. The first thing that we have to consider with re- 
gard to the nature of the object is the number of people 
in the colonies. I have taken for some years a good 
deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation 

5 justify myself in placing the number below two millions 
of inhabitants of our own European blood and color ; 
besides at least 500,000 others, who form no inconsider- 
able part of the strength and opulence of the whole. 
This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There 

10 is no occasion to exaggerate where plain truth is of so 
much weight and importance. But whether I put the 
present numbers too high or too low is a matter of little 
moment. Such is the strength with which population 
shoots in that part of the world, that, state the nuriibers 

15 as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the ex- 
aggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given 
magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our 
time in deliberating on the mode of governing two mil- 
lions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. 

20 Your children do not grow faster from infancy to man- 
hood, than they spread from families to communities, and 
from villages to nations. 

16. I put this consideration of the present and the 
growing numbers in the front of our deliberation; be- 

25 cause. Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a 
blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, 
contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suit- 
able to such an object. It will show you that it is not 
to be considered as one of those minima which are out 

30 of the eye and consideration of the law ; not a paltry 
excrescence of the state; not a mean dependent, who 
may be neglected with little damage and provoked with 



10 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and 
caution is required in the handling such an object; it 
will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so 
large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human 
race. You could at no time do so without guilt ; and 5 
be assured you will not be able to do it long with im- 
punity. 

ij. But the population of this country, the great 
and growing population, though a very important con- 
sideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined 10 
with other circumstances. The commerce of your colo- 
nies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the 
people. This ground of their commerce, indeed, has 
been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a 
distinguished person at your bar. This gentleman, after 15 
thirty-five years, — it is so long since he first appeared at 
the same place to plead for the commerce of Great 
Britain, — has come again before you to plead the same 
cause, without any other effect of time than that to the 
fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which even 20 
then marked him as one of the first literary characters 
of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge in 
the commercial interest of his country, formed by a 
long course of enlightened and discriminating experi- 
ence. 25 

/5. Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such 
a person with any detail, if a great part of the members 
who now fill the House had not the misfortune to be 
absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I 
propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat 30 
different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of 
view from whence, if you will look at this subject, it is 



THE COMMERCE OF AMERICA. il 

impossible that it should not make an impression upon 
you. 

ig. I have in my hand two accounts : one a com- 
parative state of the export trade of England to its colo- 
5 nies, as it stood in the year 1 704, and as it stood in the 
year 1772 ; the other a state of the export trade of this 
country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, com- 
pared with the whole trade of England to all parts of the 
world (the colonies included) in the year 1704. They 

10 are from good vouchers ; the latter period from the ac- 
counts on your table, the earlier from an original manu- 
script of Davenant, who first established the Inspector- 
General's office, which has been ever since his time so 
abundant a source of parliamentary information. 

15 20. The export trade to the colonies consists of three 
great branches : the African, which, terminating almost 
wholly in the colonies, must be put to the account of their 
commerce ; the West Indian ; and the North American. 
All these are so interwoven that the attempt to separate 

20 them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole ; 
and, if not entirely destroy, would very much de- 
preciate the value of all the parts. I therefore consider 
these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, 
one trade. 

25 21. The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, 
at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1 704, 
stood thus : — 

Exports to North America and the West Indies, ;^483,265 
To Africa 86,665 



30 £^^9SZ^ 

22. In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year 



12 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

between the highest and lowest of those lately laid on 
your table, the account was as follows : — 

To North America and the West Indies . . ;^4,79l,734 

To Africa 866,398 

To which if you add the export trade from 

Scotland, which had in 1704 no existence 364,000 



;^6,022,I32 



2J. From five hundred and odd thousand it has 
grown to six millions. It has increased no less than 
twelvefold. This is the state of the colony trade, as 10 
compared with itself at these two periods within this 
century ; and this is matter for meditation. But this is 
not all. Examine my second account. See how the ex- 
port trade to the colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other 
point of view, that is, as compared to the whole trade of ^5 
England in 1704: — 

The whole export trade of England, including 

that to the colonies, in 1704 ;^6,509,ooo 

Export to the colonies alone in 1772 . . . 6,024,000 

Difference .... ;^485,ooo 20 

24. The trade with America alone is now within less 
than ^500,000 of being equal to what this great com- 
mercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning of 
this century with the whole world ! If I had taken the 
largest year of those on your table, it would rather have 25 
exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American 
trade an unnatural protuberance that has drawn the juices 
from the rest of the body ? The reverse. It is the very 
food that has nourished every other part into its present 
magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly aug- 30 



RAPID COMMERCIAL GROWTH. ' 13 

merited, and augmented more or less in almost every 
part to which it ever extended, but with this material 
difference, that of the six millions which in the be- 
ginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our 
5 export commerce, the colony trade was but one-twelfth 
part ; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) consider- 
ably more than a third of the whole. This is the relative 
proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two 
periods : and all reasoning concerning our mode of treat- 
10 ing them must have this proportion as its basis ; or it is a 
reasoning weak, rotten and sophistical. wwa^-c^o^X 

2^. Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry 
over this great consideration. It is good for us, to be 
here. We stand where we have an immense view of 
15 what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and dark- 
ness rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we 
descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth 
of our national prosperity has happened within the short 
period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty- 
20 eight years. There are those alive whose memory might 
touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord 
Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. 
He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to com- 
prehend such things. He was then old enough acta 
25 parentum jam legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere 
virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious 
youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one 
of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, 
men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when 
30 in the fourth generation the third prince of the House of 
Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that na- 
tion which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing 



14 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

counsels) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his 
son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current 
of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a 
higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family 
with a new one ; — if amidst these bright and happy 5 
scenes of domestic honor and prosperity that angel should 
have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories 
of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admira- 
tion on the then commercial grandeur of England, the 
genius should point out to him a little speck, scarcely lo 
visible in the mass of the national interest, a small 
seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should 
tell hin^i, — " Young man, there is America, which at this 
day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories 
of savage men and uncouth manners ; yet shall, before 15 
you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that 
commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. 
Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive 
increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of peo- 
ple, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing 20 
settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you 
shall see as much added to her by America in the course 
of a single life ! " If this state of his country had been 
foretold to him, would it not require all the sangjiiine 
credulity of youth and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm 25 
to make him believe it ? Fortunate man, he has lived to 
see it ! Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that 
shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day ! 
26. Excuse me. Sir, if, turning from such thoughts, I 
resume this comparative view once more. You have seen 30 
it on a large scale ; look at it on a small one. I will point 
out to your attention a particular instance of it in the 



AMERICAN AGklCULlVRE. 15 

single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that 
province called for ^^i 1,459 i^ value of your commodi- 
ties, native and foreign. This was the whole. What did 
it demand in 1772? Why, nearly fifty times as much ; 
5 for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was ;£5o7,909, 
nearly equal to the export to all the colonies together in 
the first period. 

2y, I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and 
particular details; because generalities, which in all 
10 other cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have 
here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the com- 
merce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention 
is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. 

28. So far. Sir, as to the importance of the object in 
15 the view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports 

from England. If I were to detail the imports, I could 
show how many enjoyments they procure which deceive 
the burthen of life, how many materials which invigorate 
the springs of national industry, and extend and animate 
20 every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This 
would be a curious subject indeed, — but I must prescribe 
bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various. 

29. I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point 
of view, — their agriculture. This they have prosecuted 

25 with such a spirit that, besides feeding plentifully their 
own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, 
comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded a 
million in value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded, 
they will export much more. At the beginning of the 

30 century some of these colonies imported corn from the 
mother country. For some time past the Old World has 
been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have 



l6 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child 
of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman 
charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exu- 
berance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. 

^O. As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn 5 
from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter 
fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those 
acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your 
envy ; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising em- 
ployment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, lo 
to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, 
Sir, what in the world is equal to it ? Pass by the other 
parts, and look at the manner in which the people of 
New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. 
Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains 15 
of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest 
frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and Davis Strait, whilst 
we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we 
hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of 
polar cold, that they are at the antipodes and engaged 20 
under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, 
which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the 
grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting- 
place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor 
is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than 25 
the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know 
that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the 
harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude 
and pursue their gigantic game along' the coast of Brazil. 
No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate 30 
that is not witness to their toils. Neither the persever- 
ance of Holland nor the activity of France nor the 



AMERICAN FISHERIES. 17 

dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever 
carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the 
extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people 
_a people who are still, as it were, but in the eristle, 

5 and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. Wheri/i/y 
I contemplate these things; when I know thkt the 
colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of 
ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form 
by the constraints of watchful and suspicious govern- ^ 

10 ment, but that through a wise and salutary neglect a ' 
generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to 
perfection ;— when I reflect upon these effects, when I 
see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride 
of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of 

15 human contrivances melt and die away within me. My 
rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of 

liberty. 

.^ l^b/. I am sensible. Sir, that all which I have asserted 
in my detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a 

20 different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentle- 
men say, is a noble object; it is an object well worth 
fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the 
best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect 
will be led to their choice of means by their complexions 

25 and their habits. Those who understand the military 
art will of course have some predilection for it. Those 
who wield the thunder of the state may have more con- 
fidence in the efhcacy of arms. But I confess, possibly 
for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in 

30 favor of prudent management than of force,— consider- 
ing force not as an odious, but a feeble, instrument for 
preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing; 



i8 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate con- 
nection with us. 
^^ J2. First, Sir, permit me to observe that the use of 
force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a mo- 
ment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing 5 
again ; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually 
to be conquered. 

J ^^^. My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is 
not always the effect of force ; and an armament is not a 
victory. If you do not succeed, you are without re- 10 
source : for conciliation failing, force remains ; but force 
failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power 
and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but 
they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished 
and defeated violence. 15 

^^. A further objection to force is that you impair the 
object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing 
you fought for is not the thing which you recover ; but 
depreciated, sunk, wasted and consumed in the contest. 
Nothing less will content me than whole America. I do 20 
not choose to consume its strength along with our own ; 
because in all parts it is the British strength that I con- 
sume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy 
at the end of this exhausting conflict ; and still less in 
the midst of it. I may escape ; but I can make no in- 25 
surance against such an event. Let me add that I do 
not choose wholly to break the American spirit ; because 
it is the spirit that has made the country. 

J (/? 35. Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of 
force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their 30 
growth and their utility have been owing to methods al- 
together different. Our ancient indulgence has been said 






COL ONIAL LOVE OF L IBER TV. 19 

to be pursued to a fault. It may be so ; but we know, if 
feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than 
our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary 
than our penitence. 
S^^j6. These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining 
that high opinion of untried force, by which many gen- 
tlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have 
great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But 
there is still behind a third consideration concerning this 

10 object, which serves to determine my opinion on the sort 
of policy which ought to be pursued in the management 
of America, even more than its population and its com- 
merce : I mean its temper and character. 
jVjjy. In this character of the Americans a love of 

15 freedom is the predominating feature which marks and 
distinguishes the whole : and as an ardent is always a 
jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive 
and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to 
wrest from them by force or shuffle from them by chicane 

20 what they think the only advantage worth living for. 
This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English 
colonies probably than in any other people of the earth ; 
and this from a great variety of powerful causes, which, 
to understand the true temper of their minds and the 

25 direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to 

lay open somewhat more largely. 
3^ ^. First, the people of the colonies are descendants 
of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I 
hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The 

30 colonists emigrated from you when this part' of your char- 
acter was most predominant ; and they took this bias and 
direction the moment they parted from your hands. 



20 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to 
liberty according to English ideas and on. English prin- 
ciples. Abstract liberty, like other mere abs\ractions, is 
not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible ob- 
ject ; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite 5 
point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion 
of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that the 
great contests for freedom in this country were from the 
earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most 
of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned 10 
primarily on the right of election of magistrates or on the 
balance among the several orders of the state. The 
question of money was not with them so immediate. But 
in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the 
ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exer- 15 
cised, the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In 
order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the im- 
portance of this point, it was not only necessary for those 
who in argument defended the excellence of the English 
Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money 20 
as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had 
been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind 
usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Com- 
mons. They went much further : they attempted to 
prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be 25 
so, from the particular nature of the House of Commons 
as an immediate representative of the people, whether the 
old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took 
infinite pains to inculcate as a fundamental principle, that 
in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, 30 
mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting 
their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. 



I 



SELF-TAXATION THE ENGLISH TEST. 21 

The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, 
these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with 
you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. 
Liberty might be safe or might be endangered in twenty 
5 other particulars without their being much pleased or 
alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as they found 
that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do 
not say whether they were right or wrong in applying 
your general arguments to their own case. It is not 

lo easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corol- 
laries. The fact is that they did thus apply those general 
arguments ; and your mode of governing them, whether 
through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, 
confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as 

15 you, had an interest in these common principles. 
i/O'^. They were further confirmed in this pleasing 
error by the form of their provincial legislative assem- 
blies. Their governments are popular in an high degree : 
some are merely popular ; in all the popular representa- 

20 tive is the most weighty ; and this share of the people in 
their ordinary government never fails to inspire them 
with lofty sentiments and with a strong aversion from 
whatever tends to deprive them of their chief impor- 
tance. 

25 ^(p. If anything were wanting to this necessary 
operation of the form of government, religion would 
have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a 
principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn 
out or impaired ; and their mode of professing it is also 

30 one main cause of this free spirit. The people are 
Protestants, and of that kind which is the most adverse 
to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is 



22 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon 
it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averse- 
ness in the dissenting churches from ail that looks like 
absolute government is so much to be sought in their re- 
ligious tenets as in their history. Every one knows that 5 
the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most 
of the governments where it prevails ; that it has gen- 
erally gone hand in hand with them, and received great 
favor and every kind of support from authority. The 
Church of England too was formed from her cradle 10 
under the nursing care of regular government. But the 
dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition 
to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify 
that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. 
Their very existence depended on the powerful and un- 15 
remitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even 
the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the 
religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a re- 
finement on the principle of resistance : it is the dis- 
sidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 20 
religion. This religion, under a variety of denomina- 
tions agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the 
spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern 
provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstand- 
ing its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of 25 
private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of 
the people. The colonists left England when this spirit 
was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all ; 
and even that stream of foreigners which has been con- 
stantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest 3c 
part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments 
of their several countries, and have brought with them a 



EFFECT OF SLAVE-HOLDING. 23 

temper and character far from alien to that of the people 
with whom they mixed. 

^^ Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some 
gentlemen object to the latitude of this description, be- 

5 cause in the southern colonies the Church of England 
forms a large body and has a regular establishment. It 
is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance at- 
tending these colonies, which, in my opinion, fully 
counterbalances this difference and makes the spirit of 

10 liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the 
northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas 
they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the 
case in any part of the world, those who are free are by 
far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Free- 

15 dom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of 
rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in 
countries where it is a common blessing and as broad 
and general as the air, may be united with much abject 
toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, 

20 liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more 
noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the 
superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as 
much pride as virtue in it ; but I cannot alter the nature 
of man. The fact is so ; and these people of the south- 

25 ern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher 
and more stubborn spirit attached to liberty than those 
to the northward. Such were all the ancient common- 
wealths ; such were our Gothic ancestors ; such in our 
days were the Poles ; and such will be all masters of 

30 slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people 
the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit 
of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. 



24 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

^2. Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in 
our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards 
the growth and effect of this untractable spirit : I mean 
their education. In no country perhaps in the world is 
the law so general a study. The profession itself is 5 
numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes 
the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to 
the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most 
do read) endeavor to obtain some smattering in that 
science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller that 10 
in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular 
devotion, were so many books as those on the law ex- 
ported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen 
into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear 
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Coin- 15 
mentaries in America as in England. General Gage 
marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on 
your table. He states that all the people in his govern- 
ment are lawyers or smatterers in law ; and that in Bos- 
ton they have been enabled by successful chicane wholly 20 
to evade many parts of one of your capital penal con- 
stitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this 
knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights 
of legislature, their obligations to obedience and the 
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my 25 
honorable and learned friend on the floor, who con- 
descends to mark what I say for animadversion, will dis- 
dain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when 
great honors and great emoluments do not win over this 
knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable 30 
adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and 
broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and 






REMOTENESS FROM ENGLAND. 2^ 

litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders 
men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready 
in defence, full of resources. In other countries the 
people, more simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of 
5 an ill principle in government only by an actual griev- 
ance; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the 
pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. 
They augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the 
approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. 

10 ^j. The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the 
colonies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not 
merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution 
of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between 
you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of 

15 this distance in weakening government. Seas roll and 
months pass between the order and the execution ; and 
the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is 
enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, 
winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in 

20 their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But 
there a power steps in that limits the arrogance of 
raging passions and furious elements, and says, '*So far 
shalt thou go, and no farther. ' ' Who are you, that you 
should fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? 

25 Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who 
have extensive empire ; and it happens in all the forms 
into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies the 
circulation of power must be less vigorous at the ex- 
tremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern 

30 Egypt and Arabia and Kurdistan as he governs Thrace ; 
nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers 
which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is 



"i 



26 ON CONClLtATlOM WITH AMERICA. 

obliged to truck and huckster. The sultan gets such 
obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that 
he may govern at all ; and the whole of the force and 
vigor of his authority in his centre is derived from a > 
prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her 5 
provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed as you are in 
yours. She complies too : she submits ; she watches 
times. This is the immutable condition, the eternal law, 
of extensive and detached empire. 

^ ^44. Then, Sir, from these six capital sources : of de- 10 
scent, of form of government, of religion in the northern 
provinces, of manners in the southern, of education, of 
the remoteness of situation from the first mover of gover- 
ment, — from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has 
grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people 15 
in your colonies, and increased with the increase of their 
wealth : a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise 
of power in England, which, however lawful, is not 
reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with 
theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume 20 
us. 

>^5. I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this 
excess or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a 
more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in 
them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of 25 
liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an 
arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might 
wish the colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is 
more secure when held in trust for them by us, as their 
guardians during a perpetual minority, than with any 30 
part of it in their own hands. The question is not 
whether their spirit deserves praise or blame, but what, in 



l/ 



H^MAT SHALL BE DONE / 27 

the name of God, shall we do with it ? You have be- 
fore you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, with 
all its imperfections on its head. You see the magni- 
tude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the dis- 
5 orders. By all these considerations we are strongly 
urged to determine something concerning it. We are 
called upon to fix some rule and line for our future con- 
duct, which may give a little stability to our politics and 
prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the 

10 present. Every such return will bring the matter before 
us in a still more untractable form. For what astonish- 
ing and incredible things have we not seen already ! 
What monsters have not been generated from this unnat- 
ural contention ! Whilst every principle of authority and 

15 resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it 
would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in 
reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Until 
very lately all authority in America seemed to be nothing 
but an emanation from yours. Even the popular part of 

20 the colony constitution derived all its activity, and its first 
vital movement, from the pleasure of the crown. We 
thought. Sir, that the utmost which the discontented 
colonists could do was to disturb authority; we never 
dreamt they could of themselves supply it, knowing in 

25 general what an operose business it is to establish a gov- 
ernment absolutely new. But having for our purposes in 
this contention resolved that none but an obedient as- 
sembly should sit, the humors of the people there, finding 
all passage through the legal channel stopped, with great 

30 violence broke out another way. Some provinces have 
tried their experiment, as we have tried ours \ and theirs 
has succeeded. They have formed a government suffi- 



28 ON CONCILIATIOM WITH AMERICA. 

cient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution 
or the troublesome formality of an election. Evident 
necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an 
instant. So well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore 
(the account is among the fragments on your table) tells 5 
you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed 
than the ancient government ever was in its most fortu- 
nate periods. Obedience is what makes government, and 
not the names by which it is called : not the name of 
governor, as formerly ; or committee, as at present. This 10 
new government has originated directly from the people, 
and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary 
artificial media of a positive constitution. It was not a 
manufacture ready formed, and transmitted to them in 
that condition from England. The evil arising from 15 
hence is this : that the colonists having once found the 
possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the 
midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not 
henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober . 
part of mankind, as they had appeared before the trial. 20 
I' 4^. Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the 
denial of the exercise of government to still greater 
lengths, we wholly abrogated the ancient government of 
Massachusetts. We were confident that the first feeling, 
if not the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly en- 25 
force a complete submission. The experiment was tried. 
A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. 
Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now 
subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of 
health and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without 30 
governor, without public council, without judges, without 
executive magistrates. How long it will continue in this 



£:^PERIMENTS IMPERIL ENGLAND. 29 

State, or 'what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, 
how can the wisest of us conjecture ? Our late experi- 
ence has taught us that many of those fundamental 
principles formerly believed infallible are either not of the 

5 importance they were imagined to be, or that we have 
not at all adverted to some other far more important and 
far more powerful principles, which entirely overrule 
those we had considered as omnipotent. I am much 
against any further experiments which tend to put to the 

10 proof any more of these allowed opinions which con- 
tribute so much to the public tranquillity. In effect, we 
suffer as much at home by this loosening of all ties and 
this concussion of all established opinions, as we do 
abroad. For, in order to prove that the Americans have 

15 no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring 
to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of 
our own. To prove that Americans ought not to be free, 
we are obhged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; 
and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them 

20 in debate, without attacking some of those principles, or 
deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors 
have shed their blood. 

d^<^V. But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious 
experiments, I do not mean to preclude the fullest 

25 inquiry. Far from it. Far from deciding on a sudden 
or partial view, I would patiently go round and round 
the subject, and survey it minutely in every possible 
aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an 
equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable 

30 of discerning, there are but three ways of proceeding 
relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your 
colonies and disturbs your government. These are : to 



36 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

change that spirit as inconvenient, by removing the 
causes ; to prosecute it as criminal ; or to comply with it 
as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imperfect 
enumeration ; I can think of but these three. Another 
has indeed been started, that of giving up the colonies ; 5 
but it met so slight a reception that I do not think 
myself obliged to dwell a great while upon it. It is 
nothing but a little sally of anger, like the frowardness 
of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they 
would have, are resolved to take nothing. 10 

I iM 4^' ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ these plans, to change the spirit as 




inconvenient, by removing the causes, I think is the 
most like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its 
principle ; but it is attended with great difficulties, some 
of them little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. 15 
This will appear by examining into the plans which have 
been proposed. 
/~^ ^p. As the growing population in the colonies is 
"^ fevi^ntly one cause of their resistance, it was last session 
mentioned in both Houses by men of weight, and 20 
received not without applause, that in order to check 
this evil, it would be proper for the crown to make no 
further grants of land. But to this scheme there are two 
objections. The first, that there is already so much 
unsettled land in private hands as to afford room for an 25 
immense future population, although the crown not only 
withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be 
the case, then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, 
this hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to raise the 
value of the possessions in the hands of the great private 30 
monopolists, without any adequate check to the growing 
and alarming mischief of population. 



NATURE PLEADS FOR FREEDOM. 3 1 

^^O. But if you stopped your grants, what would be 
the consequence? The people would occupy without 
grants. They have already so occupied in many places. 
You cannot station garrisons in every part of these 

5 deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they 
will carry on their annual tillage and remove with their 
flocks and herds to another. Many of the people in the 
back settlements are already little attached to particular 
situations. Already they have topped the Appalachian 

10 Mountains. From thence they behold before them an 
immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow ; a square 
of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander 
without a possibiUty of restraint; they would change 
their manners with the habits of their life ; would soon 

15 forget a government by which they were disowned ; 
would become hordes of English Tartars, and pouring 
down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irre- 
sistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and 
your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and 

20 of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and 
in no long time must, be the effect of attempting to for- 
bid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command 
and blessing of Providence, ''Increase and multiply." 
Such would be the happy result of an endeavor to keep 

25 as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by an 
express charter, has given to the children of men. Far 
different and surely much wiser has been our policy 
hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every 
kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have 

30 invited the husbandman to look to authority for his title. 
We have taught him piously to believe in the mysterious 
virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each 



32 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

tract of land, as it, was peopled, into districts, that the 
ruling power should never be wholly out of sight. We 
have settled all we could ; and we have carefully attended 
every settlement with governnient. 

^r. Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as 5 
for the reasons I have just given, I think this new pro- 
ject of hedging-in population to be neither prudent nor 
practicable. 

^2. To impoverish the colonies in general, and in 
particular to arrest the noble course of their marine 10 
enterprises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess 
it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this 
kind, — a disposition even to continue the restraint after 
the offence, looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, 
and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they 15 
shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The 
power inadequate to all other things is often more than 
sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and 
immediate power of the colonies to resist our violence as 
very formidable. In this, however, I may be mistaken. 20 
But when I consider that we have colonies for no pur- 
pose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor 
understanding a little preposterous to make them un- 
serviceable in order to keep them obedient. It is, in 
truth, nothing more than the old and, as I thought, ex- 25^ 
ploded problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its 
subjects into submission. But remember, when you have 
completed your system of impoverishment, that Nature 
still proceeds in her ordinary course; that discontent 
will increase with misery; and that there are critical 
moments in the fortune of all states, when they who 
are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may be 



CAN THEIR SPIRIT BE CHANGED ? 33 

Strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis arma 
supersunt. 

3-3. The temper and character which prevail in our 
colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. 

5 We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce peo- 
ple and persuade them that they are not sprung from a 
nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. 
The language in which they would hear you tell them 
this tale would detect the imposition ; your speech would 

10 betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on 
earth to argue another Englishman into slavery. 

5^. I think it is nearly as little in our power to change 
their republican religion as their free descent, or to sub- 
stitute the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the Church 

15 of England as an improvement, The mode of inquisi- 
tion and dragooning is going out of fashion in the Old 
World ; and I should not confide much to their efiicacy 
in the New. The education of the Americans is also on 
the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You 

20 cannot persuade them to burn their books of curious 
science ; to banish their lawyers from their courts of 
laws ; or to quench the lights of their assemblies by re- 
fusing to choose those persons who are best read in their 
privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think 

25 of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which 
these lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern 
in their place, would be far more chargeable to us ; not 
quite so effectual ; and perhaps in the end full as difficult 
to be kept in obedience. 

30 ^^, With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of 
Virginia and the southern colonies, it has been proposed, 
I know, to reduce it by declaring a general enfranchise- 



34 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

ment of their slaves. This project has had its advo- 
cates and panegyrists ; yet I never could argue myself 
into any opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached 
to their masters. A general wild offer of liberty would 
not always be accepted. History furnishes few instances 
of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade slaves to be 
free as it is to compel freemen to be slaves ; and in this 
auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing 
tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk of en- 
franchisement, do we not perceive that the American lo 
master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in 
defence of freedom ? — a measure to which other people 
have had recourse more than once, and not without suc- 
cess, in a desperate situation of their affairs. 

^6. Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and 15 
dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little 
suspect the offer of freedom from that very nation which 
has sold them to their present masters ? from that nation, 
one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their 
refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic ? An 20 
offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, 
shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an 
entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo 
of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious 
to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant 25 
to publish his proclamation of liberty and to advertise 
his sale of slaves. 

^j. But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got 
over. The ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; 
and as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all 30 
the causes which weaken authority by distance will con- 
tinue. 



CAN IT BE PROSECUTED AS CRIMINAL ? 35 

Ye godSj annihilate but space and time, 
And make two lovers happy ! 

was a pious and passionate prayer, but just as reasonable 
as many of the serious wishes of very grave and solemn 
5 politicians. 

•^.S-jli then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think 
of any alterative course for changing the moral causes 
(and not quite easy to remove the natural) which pro- 
duce prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our 

10 authority, but that the spirit infallibly will continue ; and 
continuing, will produce such effects as now embarrass 
us, — the second mode under consideration is to prosecute 
that spirit in its overt acts as criminal. 

^.Gci At this proposition I must pause a moment. The 

15 thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of juris- 
prudence. It should seem to my way of conceiving such 
matters, that there is a very wide difference in reason and 
policy between the mode of proceeding on the irregular 
conduct of scattered individuals, or even of bands of 

20 men, who disturb order within the state, and the civil 
dissensions which may, from time to time, on great ques- 
tions, agitate the several communities which compose a 
great empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic 
to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this 

25 great public contest. I do not know the method of 
drawing up an indictment against a whole people. I 
cannot insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of my 
fellow-creatures, as Sir Edward Coke insulted one ex- 
cellent individual (Sir Walter Raleigh) at the bar. I am 

30 not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, 
entrusted with magistracies of great authority and dig- 
nity, and charged with the safety of their fellow-citizens, 



36 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

upon the very same title that I am. I really think that 
for wise men this is not judicious ; for sober men, not 
decent ; for minds tinctured with humanity, not mild 
and merciful. 

^.|^( Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an 5 
empire as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. 
But my idea of it is this : that an empire is the aggregate 
of many states under one common head, whether this 
head be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does in 
such constitutions frequently happen (and nothing but 10 
the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can pre- 
vent its happening) that the subordinate parts have many 
local privileges and immunities. Between these privi- 
leges and the supreme common authority the line may be 
extremely nice. Of course disputes — often, too, very 15 
bitter disputes — and much ill blood will arise. But 
though every privilege is an exemption (in the case) from 
the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is no 
denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex 
vi terjnini, to imply a superior power ; for to talk of the 20 
privileges of a state or of a person who has no superior, 
is hardly any better than speaking nonsense. Now in 
such unfortunate quarrels among the component parts of 
a great political union of communities, I can scarcely 
conceive anything more completely imprudent than for 25 
the head of the empire to insist that, if any privilege is 
pleaded against his will or his acts, [that] his whole au- 
thority is denied ; instantly to proclaim rebellion, to beat 
to arms, and to put the offending provinces under the 
ban. Will not this, Sir, very soon teach the provinces 30 
to make no distinctions on their part ? Will it not teach 
them that the government against wliich a claim of lib- 



PERILS OF CRIMlf \L PROSECUTION. 37 

erty is ta ntamount, to high treason is a government to 
which submission is equivalent to slavery ? It may not 
always be quite convenient to impress dependent com- 
munities with such an idea. 
5 6^ .1:1 We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, 
by the necessity of things, the judge. It is true, Sir. 
But I confess that the character of judge in my own 
cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me 
with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot 

10 proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until 
I find myself in something more like a judicial character. 
I must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled 
to recollect that, in my little reading upon such contests 
as these, the sense of mankind has at least as often de- 

15 cided against the superior as the subordinate power. 
Sir, let me add, too, that the opinion of my having some 
abstract right in my favor would not put me much at my 
ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there 
were no rights which, in their exercise under certain cir- 

20 cumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and 
the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considera- 
tions have great weight with me, when I find things so 
circumstanced, that I see the same party at once a civil 
litigant against me in point of right and a culprit before 

25 me, while I sit as a criminal judge on acts of his, whose 
moral quality is to be decided upon the merits of that 
very litigation. Men are every now and then put, by 
the complexity of human affairs, into strange situations ; 
but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation 

30 he will. 

62. There is, Sir,^also a circumstance which con- 
vinces me that this mode of criminal proceeding is not 



38 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

(at least in the present stage of our contest) altogether 
expedient, which is nothing less than the conduct of 
those very persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, 
by lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as 
they had formerly addressed to have traitors brought 5 
hither, under an act of Henry the Eighth, for trial. For 
though rebellion is declared, it is not proceeded against 
as such ; nor have any steps been taken towards the ap- 
prehension or conviction of any individual offender, 
either on our late or our former address ; but modes of 10 
public coercion have been adopted, and such as have 
much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility 
towards an independent power than the punishment of 
rebellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent ; 
but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical 15 
ideas to our present case. 

65. In this situation, let us seriously and coolly 
ponder. What is it we have got by all our menaces, 
which have been many and ferocious ? What advantage 
have we derived from the penal laws we have passed, 20 
and which, for the time, have been severe and numerous ? 
What advances have we made towards our object, by 
the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no 
contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? 
Nothing less. When I see things in this situation, after 25 
such confident hopes, bold promises and active exertions, 
I cannot for my life avoid a suspicion that the plan itself 
is not correctly right. 

64. If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit 
of American liberty be for the greater part, or rather 30 
entirely, impracticable ; if the ideas of criminal process 
be inapplicable, or if applicable, are in the highest de- 



ENGLAND'S RIGHT TO TAX. 39 

gree inexpedient ; what way yet remains ? No way is 
open but the third and last, — to comply with the Ameri- 
can spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it 
as a necessary evil. 
5 6^. If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate 
and concede, let us see of what nature the concession 
ought to be. To ascertain the nature of our concession, 
we must look at their complaint. The colonies complain 
that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of 

10 British freedom. They complain that they are taxed in 
a Parliament in which they are not represented. If you 
mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with 
regard to this complaint. If you mean to please any 
people, you must give them the boon which they ask, — 

15 not what you may think better for them, but of a kind 
totally different. Such an act may be a wise regulation, 
but it is no concession ; whereas our present theme is the 
mode of giving satisfaction. 

66. Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved 

20 this day to have nothing at all to do with the question of 
the right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle, — but it 
is true ; I put it totally out of the question. It is less 
than nothing in my consideration. I do not indeed won- 
der, nor will you. Sir, that gentlemen of profound learn- 

25 ing are fond of displaying it on this profound subject. 
But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly 
limited to the policy of the question. I do not examine 
whether the giving away a man's money be a power ex- 
cepted and reserved out of the general trust of govern- 

\Q ment ; and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, 
are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of 
Nature ; or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation 



40 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

is necessarily involved in the general principle of legisla- 
tion and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. 
These are deep questions, where great names militate 
against each other ; where reason is perplexed ; and an 
appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion : for high 5 
and reverend authorities lift up their heads' on both sides ; 
and there is no sure footing in the middle. This point 
is the great 

Serbonian bog, 
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, jq 

"Where armies whole have sunk. 

I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though 
in such respectable company. The question with me is, 
not whether you have a right to render your people mis- 
erable, but whether it is not your interest to make them 15 
happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but 
what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do. 
Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one ? Is 
no concession proper but that which is made from your 
want of right to keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen 20 
the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an 
odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full 
of titles and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce 
them ? What signify all those titles and all those arms ? 
Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing 25 
tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my 
suit ; and that I could do nothing but wound myself by 
the use of my own weapons ? 

6j. Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute 
necessity of keeping up the concord of this empire by a 30 
unity of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that 



EXTEND CONSTITUTIONAL PRIVILEGES. 41 

I 

1 

if I were sure the colonists had at their leaving this 
country sealed a regular compact of servitude, that they 
had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens, that they 
had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for 
5 them and their posterity to all generations ; yet I should 
hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found 
universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two 
million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles 
of freedom. I am not determining a point of law, I am 
10 restoring tranquillity; and the general character and 
situation of a people must determine what sort of govern- 
ment is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or 
ought to determine. 

68. My idea, therefore, without considering whether 
15 we yield as matter of right or grant as matter of favor, 

is to admit the people of our colonies into an interest in the 
Constitution ; and by recording that admission in the 
journals of Parliament, to give them as strong an assur- 
ance as the nature of the thing will admit, that we mean 
20 forever to adhere to that solemn declaration of systematic 
indulgence. 

69. Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act, 
upon its understood principle, might have served to show 
that we intended an unconditional abatement of the ex- 

25 ercise of a taxing power. Such a measure was then 
sufficient to remove all suspicion and to give perfect con- 
tent. But unfortunate events since that time may make 
something further necessary ; and not more necessary for 
the satisfaction of the colonies than for the dignity and 

30 consistency of our own future proceedings. 

yo. I have taken a very incorrect measure of the dis- 
position of the House, if this proposal in itself would be 



42 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

received with dislike. I think, Sir, we have few Ameri- 
can financiers. But our misfortune is, we are too acute ; 
we are too exquisite in our conjectures of the future, 
for men oppressed with such great and present evils. 
The more moderate among the opposers of parliamen- 5 
tary concession freely confess that they hope no good 
from taxation ; but they apprehend the colonists have 
further views, and if this point were conceded, they 
would instantly attack the trade laws. These gentlemen 
are convinced that this was the intention from the be- 10 
ginning, and the quarrel of the Americans with taxation 
was no more than a cloak and cover to this design. 
Such has been the language, even of a gentleman of real 
moderation and of a natural temper well adjusted to fair 
and equal government. I am, however, Sir, not a little 15 
surprised at this kind of discourse whenever I hear it ; 
and I am the more surprised on account of the argu- 
ments which I constantly find in company with it, and 
which are often urged from the same mouths and on the 
same day, 20 

A jv' 7/. For instance, when we allege that it is against rea- 
son to tax a people under so many restraints in trade as 
the Americans, the noble lord in the blue ribbon shall tell 
you that the restraints on trade are futile and useless, of 
no advantage to us, and of no burden to those on whom 25 
they are imposed \ that the trade to America is not se- 
cured by the Acts of Navigation, but by the natural and 
irresistible advantage of a commercial preference. 

72. Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture 
of the debate. But when strong internal circumstances 30 
are urged against the taxes ; when the scheme is dissected ; 
when experience and the nature of things are brought to 



TRADE-LA WS ENDANGERED. 43 

prove, and do prove, the utter impossibility of obtaining 
an effective revenue from the colonies; — when these 
things are pressed, or rather press themselves, so as to 
drive the advocates of colony taxes to a clear admission 
5 of the futility of the scheme; then. Sir, the sleeping 
trade laws revive from their trance, and this useless taxa- 
tion is to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, but as a 
counterguard and security of the laws of trade. 

7J. Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are 
^° mischievous in order to preserve trade laws that are use- 
less. Such is the wisdom of our plan in both its mem- 
bers. They are separately given up as of no value; 
and yet one is always to be defended for the sake of the 
other. But I cannot agree with the noble lord nor with 

15 the pamphlet from whence he seems to have borrowed 
these ideas concerning the inutility of the trade laws ; 
for without idolizing them, I am sure they are still in 
many ways of great use to us, and in former times they 
have been of the greatest. They do confine, and they 

20 do greatly narrow, the market for the Americans. Eut 
my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the 
least to discern how the revenue laws form any security 
whatsoever to the commercial regulations ; or that these 
commercial regulations are the true ground of the 

25 quarrel ; or that the giving way in any one instance of 
authority is to lose all that may remain unconceded. 

7^. One fact is clear and indisputable: the public 
and avowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This 
quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new 

30 questions ; but certainly the least bitter and the fewest 
of all on the trade laws. To judge which of the two be 
the real, radical cause of quarrel, we have to see whether 



44 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

the commercial dispute did, in . order of time, precede 
the dispute on taxation ? There is not a shadow of 
evidence for it. Next, to enable us to judge whether at 
this moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real cause 
of quarrel, it is absolutely necessary to put the taxes out 5 
of the question by a repeal. See how the Americans act 
in this position, and then you will be able to discern 
correctly what is the true object of the controversy, or 
whether any controversy at all will remain. Unless you 
consent to remove this cause of difference, it is impos- lo 
sible with decency to assert that the dispute is not upon 
what it is avowed to be. And I would. Sir, recommend 
to your serious consideration, whether it be prudent to 
form a rule for punishing people, not on their own acts, 
but on your conjectures. Surely it is preposterous at the 15 
very best. It is not justifying your anger by their mis- 
conduct, but it is converting your ill-will into their 
delinquency. 

75. But the colonies will go further. Alas ! alas ! 
when will this speculating against fact and reason end ? 20 
What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of 
the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct ? Is it true 
that no case can exist in which it is proper for the sover- 
eign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects ? 
Is there anything peculiar in this case to make a rule for 25 
itself? Is all authority of course lost, when it is not 
pushed to the extreme ? Is it a certain maxim that the 
fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by government, the 
more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel ? 

'j6. AH these objections being in fact no more than 30 
suspicions, conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance 
of fact and experience, they did not, Sir, discourage me 



ENGLISH HISTORY THE GUIDE. 45 

from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession, 
founded on the principles which I have just stated. 

yj. In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored 
to put myself in that frame of mind which was the most 
5 natural and the most reasonable, and which was certainly 
the most probable means of securing me from all error. 
I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a 
total renunciation of every speculation of my own ; and 
with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our an- 
10 cestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a 
constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a 
thousand times more valuable, t-he treasury of the max- 
ims and principles which formed the one and obtained 
the other. 

15 7<§. During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the 
Austrian family, whenever they were at a loss in the 
Spanish councils, it was common for their statesmen to 
say that they ought to consult the genius of Philip the 
Second. The genius of Philip the Second might mislead 

20 them; and the issue of their affairs showed that they had 
not chosen the most perfect standard. But, Sir, I am 
sure that I shall not be misled, when in a case of consti- 
tutional difficulty I consult the genius of the English 
Constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was with all 

25 due humility and piety), I found four capital examples 
in a similar Case before me : those of Ireland, Wales, 
Chester and Durham. 

79. Ireland before the English conquest, though 
never governed by a despotic power, had no Par- 

30 liament. How far the English Parliament itself was 
at that time modelled according to the present form 
is disputed among antiquarians. But we have all the 



46 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

reason in the world to be assured that a form of Parlia- 
ment such as England then enjoyed she instantly com- 
municated to Ireland ; and we are equally 'sure that almost 
every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, as 
fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither. The 5 
feudal baronage and the feudal knighthood, the roots of 
our primitive constitution, were early transplanted into 
that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, 
if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, 
gave us at least a House of Commons of weight and 10 
consequence. But your ancestors did not churlishly sit 
down alone to the feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was 
made immediately a partaker. This benefit of English 
laws and liberties, I confess, was not at first extended to 
all Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority 15 
and English liberties had exactly the same boundaries. 
Your standard could never be advanced an inch before 
your privileges. Sir John Davies shows beyond a doubt 
that the refusal of a general communication of these 
rights was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred 20 
years in subduing ; and after the vain projects of a mili- 
tary government, attempted in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make that 
country English in civility and allegiance, but your laws 
and your forms of legislature. It was not English arms, 25 
but the English Constitution, that conquered Ireland. 
From that time Ireland has ever had a general Parlia- 
ment, as she had before a partial Parliament. You 
changed the people, you altered the religion, but you 
never touched the form or the vital substance of free gov- 30 
ernment in that kingdom. You deposed kings; you 
restored them ; you altered the succession to theirs as 



IRELAND AND PVAL£S. 47 

well as to your own crown j but you never altered their 
constitution, the principle of which was respected by 
usurpation, restored with the restoration of monarchy, 
and established, I trust, forever by the glorious Revolu- 
5 tion. This has made Ireland the great and flourishing 
kingdom that it is ; and from a disgrace and a burden 
intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a principal 
part of her strength and ornament. This country cannot 
be said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular 

10 things done in the confusion of mighty troubles and on 
the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that 
is said to have been done, form no example. If they 
have any effect in argument, they make an exception to 
prove the rule. Nonepf your own liberties could stand 

15 a moment, if the casual deviations from them at such 
times were suffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. 
By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in the 
Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of sup- 
ply has been in that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners 

20 would starve, if they had no other fund to live on than 
taxes granted by English authority. Turn your eyes to 
those popular grants from whence all your great supplies 
are come, and learn to respect that only source of public 
wealth in the British Empire. 

25 80. My next example is Wales. This country was 
said to be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more 
truly to be so by Edward the First. But though then 
conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the 
realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that 

30 might have been, was destroyed, and no good one was 
substituted in its place. The care of that tract was put 
into the hands of Lords Marchers, — a form of govern- 



4S ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

ment of a very singular kind, a strange, heterogeneous 
monster, something between hostihty and government ; 
perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the 
modes of those times, to that of commander-in-chief at 
present, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. 5 
The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius of 
the government : the people were ferocious, restive, 
savage, and uncultivated, sometimes composed, never 
pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder ; 
and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. 10 
Benefits from it to the state there were none. Wales was 
only known to England by incursion and invasion. 

81. Sir, during that state of things Parliament was 
not idle. They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of 
the Welsh by all sorts of rigorous laws. They pro- 15 
hibited by statute the sending all sorts of arms into 
Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something 
more of doubt on the legality) the sending arms to 
America. They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you 
attempted (but still with more question on the legality) 20 
to disarm New England by an instruction. They made 
an act to drag offenders from Wales into England for 
trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) with 
regard to America. By another act, where one of the 
parties was an Englishman, they ordained that his trial 25 
should be always by English. They made acts to restrain 
trade, as you do ; and they prevented the Welsh from the 
use of fairs and markets, as you do the Americans from 
fisheries and foreign ports. In short, when the statute- 
book was not quite so much swelled as it is now, you find 30 
no less than fifteen acts of penal regulation on the sub- 
ject of Wales. 



LIBERTY BEGETS OBEDIENCE. 49 

S2. Here we rub our hands — A fine body of prece- 
dents for the authority of ParUament and the use of it ! 
— I admit it fully ; and pray add likewise to these prece- 
dents, that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an 
5 incubus ; that it was an unprofitable and oppressive bur- 
den ; and that an Englishman travelling in that country 
could not go six yards from the high-road without being 
murdered. 

8^. The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it 

10 was not until after two hundred years discovered that by 
an eternal law Providence had decreed vexation to vio- 
lence, and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did, how- 
ever, at length open their eyes to the ill-husbandry of 
injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people 

15 could of all tyrannies the least be endured; and that 
laws made against an whole nation were not the most 
effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accord- 
ingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, 
the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stat- 

20 ing the entire and perfect rights of the crown of Eng- 
land, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of 
English subjects. A political order was established ; the 
military power gave way to the civil ; the marches were 
turned into counties. But that a nation should have a 

25 right to English liberties, and yet no share at all in the 
fundamental security of these liberties, — the grant of 
their own property, — seemed a thing so incongruous that 
eight years after,— that is, in the thirty-fifth of that 
reign, — a complete and not ill-proportioned representa- 

30 tion by counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales 
by act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a 
charm, the tumults subsided ; obedieiice was restored ; 



50 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

peace, order and civilization followed in the train of 
liberty. When the day-star of the English Constitution 
had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and 
without: — 

— Simul alba nautis e 

Stella refulsit, 
Defluit saxis agitatus humor; 
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto 

Unda recumbit. lo 

84. The very same year the County Palatine, of 
Chester received the same relief from its oppressions and 
the same remedy to its disorders. Before this time 
Chester was little less distempered than Wales. The in- 
habitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to 15 
destroy the rights of others ; and from thence Richard 
the Second drew the standing army of archers with 
which for a time he oppressed England. The people of 
Chester applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I 
shall read to you :^- ^o 

To the King our Sovereign Lord, in most humble wise shewn 
unto your most excellent Majesty the inhabitants of your Grace's 
County Palatine of Chester: (i) That where the said County 
Palatine of Chester is and hath been always hitherto exempt, ex- 
cluded and separated out and from your high court of Parliament, 25 
to have any knights and burgesses within the said court; by reason 
whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained manifold dis- 
herisons, losses and damages, as well in their lands, goods and 
bodies, as in the good, civil and politic governance and maintenance 
of the commonwealth of their said country. (2) And forasmuch 30 
as the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the 
acts and statutes made ^nd ordained by your gaid Highness g^(i 



CHESTER AND DURHAM. 51 

your most noble progenitors, by authority of the said court, as fai 
forth as other counties, cities and boroughs have been, that have 
had their knights and burgesses within your said court of Parlia- 
ment, and yet have had neither knight ne burgess there for the said 

5 County Palatine ; the said inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been 
oftentimes touched and grieved vi^ith acts and statutes made vv^ithin 
the said court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdic- 
tions, liberties and privileges of your said County Palatine, as preju- 
dicial unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest and peace of your 

10 Grace's most bounden subjects inhabiting within the same. 

55. What did Parliament with this audacious ad- 
dress ? Reject it as a libel ? Treat it as an affront to 
government ? Spurn it as a derogation from the rights 
of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did 

15 they burn it by the hands of the common hangman? 
They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, 
without softening or temperament, unpurged of the origi- 
nal bitterness and indignation of complaint ; they made 
it the very preamble to their act of redress, and conse- 

20 crated its principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legis- 
lation. 

B>6. Here is my third example. It was attended with 
the success of the two former. Chester, civilized as well 
as Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not servi- 

25 tude, is the cure for anarchy ; as religion, and not athe- 
ism, is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern 
of Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Sec- 
ond with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, 
which is my fourth example. This county had long lain 

30 out of the pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was 
the example of Chester followed, that the style of the 
preamble is nearly the same with that of the Chester act; 



52 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

and without affecting the abstract extent of the authority 
of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not suffering 
any considerable district in which the British subjects 
may act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice 
in the grant. 5 

Sy. Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these 
preambles and the force of these examples in the acts of 
Parliaments avail anything, what can be said against 
applying them with regard to America? Are not the 
people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh ? lo 
The preamble of the act of Henry the Eighth says the 
Welsh speak • a language no way resembling that of his 
Majesty's English subjects. Are the Americans not as 
numerous? If we may trust the learned and accurate 
Judge Barrington's account of North Wales, and take 15 
that as a standard to measure the rest, there is no com- 
parison. The people cannot amount to above 200,000, 
— not a tenth part of the number in the colonies. Is 
America in rebellion ? Wales was hardly ever free from it. 
Have you attempted to govern America by penal statutes ? 20 
You made fifteen for Wales. But your legislative au- 
thority is perfect with regard to America. Was it less 
perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham ? But America 
is virtually represented. What ! does the electric force 
of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic 25 
than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? 
or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance 
of representation that is actual and palpable ? But, Sir, 
your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, 
however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom 30 
of the inhabitants of territories that are so near and com- 
paratively so inconsiderable. How then can I thjiik it 



REPRESENTA TION IMPRA CTICABLE. 53 

sufficient for those which are infinitely greater and in- 
finitely more remote ? 

S8. You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on 
the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representa- 

5 tion of the colonies in Parliament. Perhaps I might be 
inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great 
flood stops me in my course. Opposiiit natura — I can- 
not remove the eternal barriers of the creation. The 
thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. As 

10 I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the 
impracticability of such a representation : but I do not 
see my way to it ; and those who have been more confi- 
dent have not been more successful. However, the arm 
of public benevolence is not shortened, and there are 

15 often several means to the same end. What Nature has 
disjoined in one way Wisdom may unite in another. 
When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let 
us not refuse it altogether. If we cannot give the prin- 
cipal, let us find a substitute. But how ? Where ? What 

20 substitute? 

Sg. Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and 
means of this substitute to tax my own unproductive in- 
vention. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treas- 
ury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths, 

25 not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, 
not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me; it 
is at my feet, — 

And the rude swain 
Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon. 

30 I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the an- 
cient constitutional policy of this kingdom with regard 



/ 



54 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

to representation, as that policy has been declared in acts i^. 
of Parliament ; and as to the practice, to return to that 
mode which a uniform experience has marked out to you 
as best, and in which you walked with security, advan- 
tage and honor, until the year 1763. 

po. My resolutions therefore mean to establish the 
equity and justice of a taxation of America by grants 
and not by imposition ; to mark the legal competency of 
the colony assemblies for the support of their government 
in peace and for public aids in time of war ; to acknowl- lo 
edge that this legal competency has had ^ dutiful and 
beneficial exercise ; and that experience has shown the 
benefit of their grants and the futility of parliamentary 
taxation as a method of supply. 

pi. These solid truths compose six fundamental 15 
propositions. There are three more resolutions corollary 
to these. If you admit the first set, you can hardly re- 
ject the others. But if you admit the first, I shall be 
far from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. 
I think these six massive pillars will be of strength sufii- 20 
cient to support the temple of British concord. I have 
no more doubt than I entertain of my existence that, if 
you admitted these, you would command an immediate 
peace and, with but tolerable future management, a last- 
ing obedience in America. I am not arrogant in 25 
this confident assurance. The propositions are all 
mere matters of fact ; and if they are such facts as 
draw irresistible conclusions even in the stating, this 
is the power of truth, and not any management of 
mine. 30 

92. Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you, together 
with such observations on the motions as may tend to 



FIRST TWO RESOLUTIONS. 55 

, ■'.-illustrate them where they may want explanation. The 
first is a resolution, — 

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
c taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not 
had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights 
and burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of 
Parliament. 

This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, 
10 and (excepting the description) it is laid down in the 
language of the constitution ; it is taken nearly verbatim 
from acts of Parliament. 
g^. The second is like unto the first, — 

That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to, and 
le bounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given 
and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
tions have not their knights and burgesses in the said high court 
of Parliament, of their own election, to represent the condition of 
their country ; by lack whereof they have been oftentimes touched 
20 and grieved by subsidies given, granted and assented to, in the 
said court, in a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quiet- 
ness, rest and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same. 

g/^. Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong 
or too weak ? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme 
25 legislature ? Does it lean too much to the claims of the 
people ? If it runs into any of these errors, the fault is 
not mine. It is the language of your own ancient acts 
of Parliament : — 

Non meus hie sermo, sed quae praecepit Ofellus, 
30 Rusticus, abnormis sapiens. 

It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, 



56 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

home-bred sense of this country, — I did not dare to rub 
off a particle of the venerable rust that rather adorns 
and preserves, than destroys, the metal. It would be a 
profanation to touch with a tool the stones which con- 
struct the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate 5 
with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness 
of these truly constitutional materials. Above all things, 
I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering, — the odious 
vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my foot in 
the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander 10 
nor stumble. Determining to fix articles of peace, I was 
resolved not to be wise beyond what was. written ; I was 
resolved to use nothing else than the form of sound 
words, to let others abound in their own sense, and care- 
fully to abstain from all expressions of my own. What 15 
the law has said, I say. In all things else I am silent. 
I have no organ but for her words. This, if it be not 
ingenious, I am sure is safe. 

P5. There are indeed words expressive of grievance 
in this second resolution, which those who are resolved 20 
always to be in the right will deny to contain matter of 
fact, as applied to the present case, although Parliament 
thought them true with regard to the counties of Ches- 
ter and Durham. They will deny that the Americans 
were ever ^Houched and grieved" with the taxes. If 25 
they consider nothing in taxes but their weight as pecun- 
iary impositions, there might be some pretence for this 
denial. But men may be sorely touched and deeply 
grieved in their privileges as well as in their purses. 
Men may lose little in property by the act which takes 30 
away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a trifle 
on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that consti- 



EVIDENCE OF GRIEVANCES. 57. 

tutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to privi- 
leges. Even ancient indulgences withdrawn, without 
offence on the part of those who enjoyed such favors, 
operate as grievances. But were the Americans then not 

5 touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure, 
merely as taxes ? If so, why were they almost all either 
wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced? Were they 
not touched and grieved even by the regulating duties of 
the sixth of George the Second? Else why were the 

10 duties first reduced to one-third in 1764, and afterwards 
to a third of that third in the year 1766 ? Were they not 
touched and grieved by the Stamp Act? I shall say 
they were, until that tax is revived. Were they not 
touched and grieved by the duties of 1767, which were 

,15 likewise repealed, and which Lord Hillsborough tells you 
(for the ministry) were laid contrary to the true principle 
of commerce? Is not the assurance given by that noble 
person to the colonies of a resolution to lay no more 
taxes on them, an admission that taxes would touch and 

20 grieve them ? Is not the resolution of the noble lord in 
the blue ribbon, now standing on your journals, the 
strongest of all proofs that parliamentary subsidies really 
touched and grieved them ? Else why all these changes, 
modifications, repeals, assurances and resolutions ? 

25 ^6. The next proposition is, — 

That, from the distance of the said colonies and from other cir- 
cumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring a 
representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 

This is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on the 
30 paper ; though in my private judgment a useful repre- 
sentation is impossible. I am sure it is not desired by 



58 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

them ; nor ought it, perhaps, by us : but I abstain from 
opinions. 

97. The fourth resolution is, — 

That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen 
in part or in the whole by the freemen, freeholders or other free 5 
inhabitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or 
general court ; with powers legally to raise, levy and assess, ac- 
cording to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes 
towards defraying all sorts of public services. 

p8. This competence in the colony assemblies is cer- 10 
tain. It is proved by the whole tenor of their acts of 
supply in all the assemblies, in which the constant style 
of granting is, "An aid to his Majesty"; and acts 
granting to the crown have regularly for near a century 
passed the public offices without dispute. Those who 15 
have been pleased paradoxically to deny this right, hold- 
ing that none but the British Parliament can grant to the 
crown, are wished to look to what is done, not only in 
the colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform, unbroken 
tenor every session. Sir, I am surprised that this doc- 20 
trine should come from some of the law servants of the 
crown. I say that if the crown could be responsible, his 
Majesty — but certainly the ministers, and even these law 
officers themselves through whose hands the acts pass, 
biennially in Ireland or annually in the colonies, are in 25 
an habitual course of committing impeachable offences. 
What habitual offenders have been all presidents of the 
council, all secretaries of state, all first lords of trade, all 
attorneys and all solicitors-general ! However, they are 
safe, as no one impeaches them ; and there is no ground 30 
of charge against them, except in their own unfounded 
theories. 



PIPTH RESOJAJTION. 59 

gg. The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact, — 

That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies 
legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times freely granted 
several large subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, ac- 
r cording to their abilities, when required thereto by letter from one 
of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state ; and that their right 
to grant the same and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said 
grants have been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament. 

To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian 

10 wars, and not to take their exertion in foreign ones so 

high as the supplies in the year 1695, not to go back to 

their public contributions in the year 1 7 1 o, I shall begin 

to travel only where the journals give me light, — resolving 

to deal in nothing but fact authenticated by parliamentary 

15 record, and to build myself wholly on that solid basis. 

100. On the 4th of April, 1748, a committee of this 

House came~Tothe following resolution : — 

Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee that it is just 
and reasonable that the several provinces and colonies of Massa- 
20 chusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island, be 
reimbursed the expenses they have been at in taking and securing 
to the crown of Great Britain the island of Cape Breton and its 
dependencies. 

lOi. These expenses were immense for such colonies, 
25 They were above ^200,000 sterling : money first raised 
and advanced on their public credit. 

102. On the 28th of January, 1756, a message from 
the king came to us to this effect : — 

His Majesty, being sensible of the zeal and vigor with which 
30 liis faithful subjects of certain colonies in North America have ex- 
erted themselves in defence of his Majesty's just rights and posses- 



6o ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

sions, recommends it to this House to take the same into their con- 
sideration, and to enable his Majesty to give them such assistance 
as may be a proper reward and encourage?nent. 

10^. On the 3d of February, 1756, the House came 
to a suitable resolution, expressed in words nearly the 5 
same as those of the message ; but with the further addi- 
tion that the money then voted was as an encouragement 
to the colonies to exert themselves with vigor. It will 
not be necessary to go through all the testimonies which 
your own records have given to the truth of my resolu- 10 
tions. I will only refer you to the places in the journals : — 

Vol. XXVII.— i6th and 19th May, 1757. 

Vol. XXVIII. — June ist, 175S; April 26th and 30th, 1759; 
March 26th and 31st, and April 28th, 1760 ; Jan. 9th and 20th, 1761. 
Vol. XXIX. — Jan. 22d and 26th, 1762; March 14th and 17th, 15 

1763. 

104. Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Par- 
liament that the colonies not only gave, but gave to 
satiety. This nation has formally acknowledged two 
things : first, that the colonies had gone beyond their 20 
abilities. Parliament having thought it necessary to reim- 
burse them ; secondly, that they had acted legally and 
laudably in their grants of money and their maintenance 
of troops, since the compensation is expressly given as 
reward and encouragement. Reward is not bestowed for 25 
acts that are unlawful \ and encouragement is not held 
out to things that deserve reprehension. My resolution 
therefore does nothing more than collect into one propo- 
sition what is scattered through your journals. I give 
you nothing but your own ; and you cannot refuse in the 30 
gross what you have so often acknowledged in detail. 



GRANT OR IMPOSITION? 6l 

The admission of this, which will be so honorable to 
them and to you, will indeed be mortal to all the mis- 
erable stories by which the passions of the misguided peo- 
ple have been engaged in an unhappy system. The peo- 
5 pie heard, indeed, from the beginning of these disputes, 
one thing continually dinned in their ears, — that reason 
and justice demanded that the Americans, who paid no 
taxes, should be compelled to contribute. How did that 
fact of their paying nothing stand when the taxing sys- 

lo tem began ? When Mr. Grenville began to form his sys- 
tem of American revenue, he stated in this House that 
the colonies were then in debt two millions six hundred 
thousand pounds sterling money, and was of opinion they 
would discharge that debt in four years. On this state, 

15 those untaxed people were actually subject to the pay- 
ment of taxes to the amount of six hundred and fifty 
thousand a year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville was 
mistaken. The funds given for sinking the debt did not 
prove quite so ample as both the colonies and he ex- 

20 pected. The calculation was too sanguine; the reduc- 
tion was not completed till some years after, and at differ- 
ent times in different colonies. However, the taxes after 
the war continued too great to bear any addition with 
prudence or propriety ; and when the burdens imposed 

25 in consequence of former requisitions were discharged, 
our tone became too high to resort again to requisition. 
No colony since that time ever has had any requisition 
whatsoever made to it. 

10^. We see the sense of the crown and the sense 

30 of Parliament on the productive nature of a revenue by 
grant. Now search the same journals for the produce 
of the revenue by imposition. Where is it ? Let us know 



6i ON CONCILIATION WiTJi AMERICA. 

the volume and the page. What is the gross, what is the 
net produce ? To what service is it applied ? How have 
you appropriated its surplus? What, can none of the 
many skilful index-makers that we are now employing 
find any trace of it ? Well, let them and that rest to- 5 
gether. But are the journals, which say nothing of the 
revenue, as silent on the discontent ? Oh, no ! a child 
may find it. It is the melancholy burden and blot of 
every page. 

1 06. I think, then, I am, from those journals, justified 'o 
in the sixth and last resolution, which is, — 

That it hath been found by experience that the manner of grant- 
ing the said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath 
been more agreeable to the said colonies, and more beneficial and 
conducive to the public service, than the mode of giving and 15 
granting aids in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the said 
colonies. 

/07. This makes the whole of the fundamental part 
of the plan. The conclusion is irresistible. You cannot 
say that you were driven by any necessity to an exercise 20 
of the utmost rights of legislature. You cannot assert 
that you took on yourselves the task of imposing colony 
taxes, from the want of another legal body that is com- 1 
petent to the purpose of supplying the exigencies of the f 
state without wounding the prejudices of the people. £5 
Neither is it true that the body so qualified and having 
that competence had neglected the duty. 

loS. The question now, on all this accumulated mat- 
ter, is, — whether you will choose to abide by a profitable 
experience or a mischievous theory; whether you choose 30 
to build on imagination or fact ; whether you prefer en- 



P/RST COROLLARY RESOLUTION: 63 

joyment or hope ; satisfaction in your subjects or discon- 
tent? 

/Op. If these propositions are accepted, everything 
which has been made to enforce a contrary system must, 
5 I take it for granted, fall along with it. On that ground 
I have drawn the following resolution, which, when it 
comes to be moved, will naturally be divided in a proper 
manner: — 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the seventh year 

10 of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, « An act for grant- 
ing certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in 
America ; for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs upon 
the exportation from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoanuts of the 
produce of the said colonies or plantations ; for discontinuing the 

15 drawbacks payable on China earthenware exported to America; 
and for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of 
goods in the said colonies and plantations." — And that it may be 
proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth year of the reign 
of his present Majesty, entitled, " |A.n act to discontinue, in such 

20 manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing 
and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares and merchan- 
dise, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the province 
of Massachusetts Bay, in North America." — And that it may be 
proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth year of the reign 

25 of his present Majesty, entitled, '" An act for the impartial admin- 
istration of justice in the cases o'f persons questioned for any acts 
done by them in the execution of the law, or for the suppression 
off riots and tumults, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New 
E/ngland." — And that it may be proper to repeal an act made in 

30 the fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, 
"An act for the better regulating the government of the province 
oir the Massachusetts Bay, in New England." — And also, that it 
may be proper to explain and amend an act made in the thirty-fifth 
yjear of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, entitled, " An act for 

3c tfie trial of treasons committed^^ut of the king's dominions." 



V 



64 ON CONClUATtON WITH AMERICA. 

I lO. I wish, Sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, be- 
cause (independently of the dangerous precedent of sus- 
pending the rights of the subject during the king's 
pleasure) it was passed-, as I apprehend, with less 
regularity and on more partial principles than it ought. 5 
The corporation of Boston was not heard before it was 
condemned. Other towns, full as guilty as she was, have 
not had their ports blocked up. Even the Restrain- 
ing Bill of the present session does not go to the 
length of the Boston Port Act. The same ideas of 10 
prudence which induced you not to extend equal punish- 
ment to equal guilt, even when you were punishing, 
induced me, who mean not to chastise but to reconcile, 
to be satisfied with the punishment already partially 
inflicted. 15 

///. Ideas of prudence and accommodation to cir- 
cumstances prevent you from taking away the charters 
of Connecticut and Rhode Island, as you have taken 
away that of Massachusetts Colony, though the crown 
has far less power in the two former provinces than it 20 
enjoyed in the latter, and though the abuses have been 
full as great and as flagrant in the exempted as in tVie 
punished. The same reasons of prudence and accommo- 
dation have weight with me in restoring the charter of 
Massachusetts Bay. Besides, Sir, the act which chan^^es 25 
the charter of Massachusetts is in many particulars ^so 
exceptionable that, if I did not wish absolutely to repeal^, I 
would by all means desire to alter it, as several of jits 
provisions tend to the subversion of all public and priva^^te 
justice. Such, among others, is the power in the go-v- 30 
ernor to change the sherifl" at his pleasure, and to make 
a new returning officer for every special cause. It 'is 

/ 



SECOND COROLLARY RESOLUTION. 65 

shameful to behold such a regulation standing among ' 
English laws. 

112. The act for bringing persons accused of com- 
mitting murder under the orders of government to 
5 England for trial is but temporary. That act has 
calculated the probable duration of our quarrel with the 
colonies, and is accommodated to that supposed duration. 
I would hasten the happy moment of reconcihation ; and 
therefore must, on my principle, get rid of that most 

10 justly obnoxious act. 

/ /J. The act of Henry the Eighth for the trial of 
treasons I do not mean to take away, but to confine it to 
its proper bounds and original intention; to make it 
expressly for trial of treasons (and the greatest treasons 

15 may be committed) in places where the jurisdiction of the 
crown does not extend. 

114. Having guarded the privileges of local legis- 
lature, I would next secure to the colonies a fair and ^\ 
unbiased judicature ; for which purpose, Sir, I propose ^ 

20 the following resolution : — <-/ 



That, from the time when the general assembly, or general 
court, of any colony or plantation in North America shall have 
appointed by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to 
the offices of the chief justice and other judges of the superior 

25 court, it may be proper that the said chief justice and other judges 

of the superior courts of such colony shall hold his and their office 

and offices during their good behavior, and shall not be removed 

^ therefrom but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his 

Majesty in council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general 

50 assembly, or on a complaint from the governor or council or the 
house of representatives, severally, of the colony in which the said 
chief justice and other judges have exercised the said offices. 



66 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

Illy, The next resolution relates to the courts of 
admiralty. It is this : — 

That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or 
vice-admiralty authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth of ' 
George the Third, in such a ^manner as to make the same more 5 
conomodious to those who sue or are sued in the said courts; and 
to provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in the 
same. 

116. These courts I do not wish to take away : they 
are in themselves proper establishments. This court is 10 
one of the capital securities of the Act of Navigation. 
The extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased ; 
but this is altogether as proper, and is indeed on 
many accounts more eligible, where new powers were 
wanted, than a court absolutely new. But courts incom- 15 
modiously situated in effect den|r justice ; and a court 
partaking in the fruits of its own condemnation is a 
robber. The Congress complain, and complain justly, 
of this grievance. 

iiy. These are the three consequential propositions. 20 
I have thought of two or three more ; but they come 
rather too near detail and to the province of executive 
government, which I wish Parliament always to superin- 
tend, never to assume. If the first six are granted, con- 
gruity will carry the latter three. If not, the things that 25 
remain unrepealed will be, I hope, rather unseemly in- 
cumbrances on the building than very materially detri- 
mental to its strength and stability. 

7 18. Here, Sir, I should close ; but I plainly perceive 
some" objections remain, which I ought, if possible, to 30 
remove. The first will be that, in resorting to the 



SANCTION FOR RESOLUTIONS. 67 

doctrine of our ancestors as contained in the preamble to 
the Chester Act, I prove too much ; that the grievance 
from a want of representation, stated in that preamble, 
goes to the whole of legislation as well as to taxation ; 

5 and that the colonies, grounding themselves upon that 
doctrine, will apply it to all parts of legislative authority. 
/ /p. To this objection, with all possible deference and 
humility, and wishing as little as any man living to im- 
pair the smallest particle of our supreme authority, I 
10 answer that the words are the words of Parliament, and ****j^r*— -^ 
not mine ; and that all false and inconclusive inferences *wr A-^w^ 
drawn from them are not mine, for I heartily disclaim ^fvX^222 
any such inference. I have chosen the words of an act T^^^T^j^ 
of Parhament which Mr. Grenville, surely a tolerably ''*^*'*'^ • 

,'5 zealous and very judicious advocate for the sovereignty of . /? 

r Parliament, formerly moved to have read at _ynur table '^^^d^^J^^ V 
confirmation of his tenets.'i^It is true that Lord Chatham '^^^i^^^uZy^ 
^ considered these preambles as declaring strongly i n favo r '^^'^^^-^T^ 
\ ot his opinic^ns. He was a no less powerful advocate for^.^..^ C^ 
^o the privileges of the Americans. Ought I not from ^»-/^ v'^^ 
' hence to presume that these preambles age.^ favorable a s ly.^J!jrj^ 
\ possible to both, when properly understood, — favorable>^^^^-w! 
both to the rights of Parliament and to the privilege o^^^J'^T' ' 
p the dependencies of this crown ? But, Sir, the object of^fe ^^zW^S 
^25 grievance in my resolution I have not taken from the 
Chester, but from the Durham Act, which confines the 
hardship of want of representation to the case of sub- 
sidies, and which therefore falls in exactly with the case . j / 
of the colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties ^^^^2;;;^^^ 
h^ "^^"^^de jure or de facto h ound, the preambles do not ac- ^-^^el^ 
curately distinguish; nor indeed was it necessary; for^— *fei^ 
whether de jure or de facto, the legislature thought the. 



68 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

exercise of the power of taxing, as of right or as of fact 
without right, equally a grievance and equally oppressive. 
120. I do not know that the colonies have, in any 
general way or in any cool hour, gone much beyond the 
demand of immuni ty in relation to taxes. It is not fair 5 
to judge of the temper or disposition of any man or any 
set of men, when they are composed and at rest, from 
their conduct or their expressions in a state of disturb- 
ance and irritation. It is, besides, a very great mistake to 
f ^ imagine that mankind follow up practically any speculative 10 
^„^^,^rinciple, either of government or of freedom, as far as it 
jt^t^JbU ^ ouwill go in argument and logica l illation . We Englishmen 
•"^^'^tit.*-..*^ stop very short of the principles upon which we support any 
given part of our Constitution, or even the whole of it 
together. I could easily, if I had not already tired you, 15 
give you very striking and convincing instances of it. 
This is nothing but what is natural and proper. All 
government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, 
every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on com- 
promise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we 20 
give and take ; we remit some rights that we may enjoy 
others ; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than 
subtle disputants. As we must give away some natural 
liberty to enjoy civil advantages, so we must sacrifice 
some civil liberties for the advantages to be derived from 25 
the communion and fellowship of a great empire. But in 
all fair dealings the thing bought must bear some pro- 
portion to the purchase paid. None wiirbarter away the 
immediate jewel of his soul. Though a great house is 
apt to make slaves haughty, yet it is purchasing a part of 30 
the artificial importance of a great empire too dear to pay 
for it all essential rights and all the intrinsic dignity of 



INDULGENCE WILL CURE REBELLION 69 

human nature. None of us who would not risk his hfe , 
rather than fall under a government purely arbitrary. 
But although there are some amongst us who think our 
Constitution wants many improvements to make it a com- 
5 plete system of liberty, perhaps none who are of that 
opinion would think it right to aim at such improvement 
by disturbing his country and risking everything that is 
dear to him. In every arduous enterprise we consider 
what we are to lose as well as what we are to gain \ and 

10 the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, 
the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it-^-' 
more. These are the cords of man. Man acts from 
adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on 
metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of 

15 reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and 
propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical ac- 
curacy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious of all 
sophistry. 

121. The Americans will have no interest contrary to 
20 the grandeur and glory of England, when they are not 
oppressed by the weight of it ; and they will rather be 
inclined to respect the acts of a superintending legislature, 
when they see them the acts of that power which is itself 
the security, not the rival, of their secondary impor- 
25 tailce. In this assurance my mind most perfectly ac- 
quiesces ; and I confess I feel not the least alarm from the 
discontents which are to arise from putting people at their 
ease ; nor do I apprehend the destruction of this empire 
from giving, by an act of free grace and indulgence, to 
30 two millions of my fellow-citizens, some share of those 
rights upon which I have always been taught to value 
myself. 



70 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

122. It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, 
vested in American assemblies, would dissolve the unity 
of the empire, which was preserved entire, although 
Wales and Chester and Durham were added to it. 
Truly, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what this unity 5 
means ; nor has it ever been heard of, that I know, in 
the constitutional policy of this country. The very idea 
of subordination of parts excludes this notion of simple 
and undivided unity. England is the head, but she is 
not the head and the members too. Ireland has ever 10 
had from the beginning a separate, but not an independ- 
ent, legislature, which, far from distracting, promoted 
the union of the whole. Everything was sweetly and 
harmoniously disposed through both islands for the con- 
servation of English dominion and the communication of 15 
English liberties. I do not see that the same principles 
might not be carried into twenty islands, and with the 
same good effect. This is my model with regard to 
America, as far as the internal circumstances of the two 
countries are the same. I know no other unity of this 20 
empire than I can draw from its example during these 
periods when it seemed to my poor understanding more 
united than it is now, or than it is likely to be by the 
present methods. 

I2J. But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, 25 
Mr. Speaker, almost too late, that I promised, before I 
finished, to say something of the proposition of the noble 
lord on the floor, which has been so lately received, and 
stands on your journals. I must be deeply concerned 
whenever it is my misfortune to continue a difference 30 
with the majority of this House. But as the reasons for 
that difference are my apology for thus troubling you, 



\ 

E VI L S OF RANSOM BY A UCTION. 7 1 

suffer me to state them in a very few words. I shall 
compress them into as small a body as I possibly can, 
having already debated that matter at large when the 
question was before the committee. 
5 124, First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of 
a ransom by auction, because it is a mere project. It is 
a thing new, unheard of, supported by no experience, 
justified by no analogy, without example of our ancestors 
or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular parlia- 

10 mentary taxation nor colony grant. Experimentum in 
corpore vili is a good rule, which will ever make me 
adverse to any trial of experiments on what is certainly 
the most valuable of all subjects, — the peace of this 
empire. 

15 725. Secondly, it is an experiment which must be 
fatal in the end to our Constitution. For what is it but a 
scheme for taxing the colonies in the antechamber of the 
noble lord and his successors ? To settle the quotas and 
proportions in this House is clearly impossible. You, 

20 Sir, may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auctioneer 
with your hammer in your hand, and knock down to 
each colony as it bids. But to settle (on the plan laid 
down by the noble lord) the true proportional payment 
for four or five and twenty governments, according to the 

25 absolute and the relative wealth of each, and according 
to the British proportion of wealth and burden, is a wild 
and chimerical notion. This new taxation must there- 
fore come in by the back door of the Constitution. 
Each quota must be brought to this House ready 

30 formed. You can neither add nor alter. You must 
register it. You can do nothing further. For on what 
grounds can you deliberate either before or after th^ 



72 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

proposition ? You cannot hear the counsel for all these 
provinces, quarrelling each on its own quantity of pay- 
ment and its proportion to others. If you should at- 
tempt it, the committee of provincial ways and means, 
or by whatever other name it will delight to be called, 5 
must swallow up all the time of Parliament. 

126. Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the 
complaint of the colonies. They complain that they are 
taxed without their consent ; you answer that you will 
fix the sum at which they shall be taxed. That is, you 10 
give them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell 
them, indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. 
I really beg pardon ; it gives me pain to mention it ; but 
you must be sensible that you will not perform this part 
of the compact. For suppose the colonies were to lay 15 
the duties which furnished their contingent upon the im- 
portation of your manufactures, you know you would 
never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that 
you would not suffer many other modes of taxation. So 
that when you come to explain yourself, it will be found 20 
that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum 
nor the mode; nor indeed anything. The whole is 
delusion from one end to the other. 

727. Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, 
unless it be universally accepted, will plunge you into 25 
great and inextricable difficulties. In what year of our 
Lord are the proportions of payments to be settled ? To 
say nothing of the inipossibility that colony agents should 
have general powers of taxing the colonies at their dis- 
cretion, consider, I implore you, that the communication 30 
by special messages and orders between these agents and 
th^ir constituents on each variation of the case, when 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROJECT. 73 

the parties come to contend together and to dispute on 
their relative proportions, will be a matter of delay, 
perplexity and confusion that never can have an end. 
12S. If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry, 
5 what is the condition of those assemblies who offer, by 
themselves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your 
ideas of their proportion ? The refractory colonies who 
refuse all composition will remain taxed only to your old 
impositions, which, however grievous in principle, are 

10 trifling as to production. The obedient colonies in this 
scheme are heavily taxed ; the refractory remain unbur- 
dened. What will you do? Will you lay new and 
heavier taxes by Parliament on the disobedient ? Pray 
consider in what way you can do it. You are perfectly 

15 convinced that in the way of taxing you can do nothing 
but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia that refuses 
to appear at your auction, while Maryland and North 
Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom, and are taxed 
to your quota, how will you put these colonies on a par ? 

20 Will you tax the tobacco of Virginia ? If you do, you 
give its death-wound to your English revenue at home 
and to one of the very greatest articles of your own 
foreign trade. If you tax the import of that rebellious 
colony, what do you tax but your own manufactures or 

25 tlie goods of some other obedient and already well-taxed 
colony? Who has said one word on this labyrinth of 
detail which bewilders you more and more as you enter 
into it ? Who has presented, who can present you with 
a clue to lead you out of it ? I think, Sir, it is impos- 

30 sible that you should not recollect that the colony bounds 
are so implicated in one another (you know it by your 
other experiments in the bill for prohibiting the New 



74 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

England fishery) that you can lay no possible restraints 
on almost any of them which may not be presently 
eluded, if you do not confound the innocent with the 
guilty, and burden those whom, upon every principle, 
you ought to exonerate. He niust be grossly ignorant 5 
of America who thinks that, without falling into this con- 
fusion of all rules of equity and policy, you can restrain 
any single colony, especially Virginia and Maryland, the 
central and most important of them all. 

729. Let it also be considered that, either in the 10 
present confusion you settle a permanent contingent, 
which will and must be trifling, and then you have no 
effectual revenue ; or you change the quota at every 
exigency, and then on every new repartition you will 
have a new quarrel. 15 

1^0. Reflect besides, that when you have fixed a 
quota for every colony, you have not provided for 
prompt and punctual payment. Suppose one, two, five, 
ten years' arrears. You cannot issue a treasury extent 
against the failing colony. You must make new Boston 20 
Port Bills, new restraining laws, new acts for dragging 
men to England for trial. You must send out new fleets, 
new armies. All is to begin again. From this day for- 
ward the empire is never to know an hour's tranquillity. 
An intestine fire will be kept alive in the bowels of the 25 
colonies, which one time or other must consume this 
whole empire. I allow indeed that the empire of Ger- , 
many raises her revenue and her troops by quotas and 
contingents; but the revenue of the empire and the 
army of the empire is the worst revenue and the worst 30 
army in the world. 

1^1. Instead of standing revenue,' you will therefore 



TPVO PLANS CONTRASTED. 75 

have a perpetual quarrel. Indeed, the noble lord who 
proposed this project of a ransom by auction seemed 
himself to be of that opinion. His project was rather 
designed for breaking the union of the colonies than for 
5 establishing a revenue. He confessed he apprehended 
that his proposal would not be to their taste. I say this 
scheme of disunion seems to be at the bottom of the proj- 
ect; for I will not suspect that the noble lord meant 
nothing but merely to delude the nation by an airy 

10 phantom which he never intended to realize. But what- 
ever his views may be, as I propose the peace and union 
of the colonies as the very foundation of my plan, it can- 
not accord with one whose foundation is perpetual dis- 
cord. 

15 ^1^2. Compare the two. This I offer to give you is 
plain and simple ; the other full of perplexed and intri- 
cate mazes. This is mild ; that harsh. This is found 
by experience effectual for its purposes ; the other is a 
new project. This is universal ; the other calculated for 

20 certain colonies only. This is immediate in its concilia- 
tory operation ; the other remote, contingent, full of 
hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling 
people, — gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as a 
matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in 

25 proposing it to you. I have indeed tired you by a long 
discourse ; but this is the misfortune of those to whose 
influence nothing will be conceded, and who must win 
every inch of their ground by argument. You have 
heard me with goodness. May you decide with wisdom ! 

30 For my part, I feel my mind greatly disburdened by what 
I have done to-day. I have been the less fearful of try- 
ing your patience, because on this subject I mean to spare 



76 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

it altogether in future. I have this comfort, that in every 
stage of the American affairs I have steadily opposed the 
measures that have produced the confusion, and may 
bring on the destruction, of this empire. I now go so 
far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I cannot give 5 
peace to my country, I give it to my conscience.^ - , 
I 13^. *'But what," says the financier, ''is peace to us 
without money ? Your plan gives us no revenue." No ! 
But it does ; for it secures to the subject the power of 
REFUSAL, the first of all revenues. Experience is a 10 
cheat and fact a liar, if this power in the subject of pro- 
portioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not 
been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered 
by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does not in- 
deed vote you ;£i52,75o \\s. 2^ths, nor any other 15 
paltry limited sum ; but it gives the strong-box itself, the 
fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise 
amongst a people sensible of freedom : Posita luditur 
area. Cannot you in England, cannot you at this time 
of day, cannot you, an House of Commons, trust to the 20 
principle which has raised so mighty a revenue and ac- 
cumulated a debt of near 140 millions in this country ? 
Is this principle to be true in England and false every- 
where else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not 
hitherto been true in the colonies? Why should you 25 
presume that in any country a body duly constituted for 
any function will neglect to perform its duty and abdicate 
its trust? Such a presumption would go against all 
governments in all modes. But in truth this dread of 
penury of supply from a free assembly has no foundation 30 
in nature. For first observe, that besides the desire 
which all men have naturally of supporting the honor of 



PREEDOM THE GREATEST OF REVENUES. TJ 

their own government, that sense of dignity and that 
security to property which ever attends freedom has a 
tendency to increase the stock of the free community. 
Most may be taken where most is accumulated. And 
5 what is the soil or climate where experience has not uni- 
formly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up 
plenty, bursting from the weight on its own rich luxuri- 
ance, has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue 
than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed 

lo indigence by the straining of all the politic machinery in 
the world ? 

1^4. Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a 
free country. We know, too, that the emulations of 
such parties, their contradictions, their reciprocal neces- 

15 sities, their hopes and their fears, must send them all in 
their turns to him that holds the balance of the state. 
The parties are the gamesters ; but government keeps the 
table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. When 
this game is played, I really think it is more to be feared 

20 that the people will be exhausted than that government 
will not be supplied. Whereas, whatever is got by acts 
of absolute power, ill obeyed because odious, or by con- 
tracts ill kept because constrained, will be narrow, feeble, 
uncertain and precarious. 

25 Ease would retract 

Vows made in pain, as violent and void. 

755. I, for one, protest against compounding our de- 
mands. I declare against compounding for a poor limited 
sum the immense, ever-growing, eternal debt which is 
30 due to generous government from protected freedom. 
And so may I speed in the great object I propose to you, 



7S ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

as I think it would not only be an act of injustice, but 
would be the worst economy in the world, to compel the 
colonies to a sum certain, either in the way of ransom or 
in the way of compulsory compact. 

1^6. But to clear up my ideas on this subject, — a 5 
revenue from America transmitted hither, — do not delude 
yourselves : you never can receive it, — no, not a shilling. 
We have experience that from remote countries it is not 
to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract reve- 
nue from Bengal, you weire obliged to return in loan what 10 
you had taken in imposition, what can you expect from 
North America? For certainly, if ever there was a 
country qualified to produce wealth, it is India ; or an 
institution for the transmission, it is the East India Com- 
pany. America has none of these aptitudes. If America 15 
gives you taxable objects on which you lay your duties 
here, and gives you at the same time a surplus by a 
foreign sale of her commodities to pay the duties on these 
objects which you tax at home, she has performed her 
part to the British revenue. But with regard to her own 20 
internal establishments, she may, — I doubt not she will, 
— contribute in moderation. I say in moderation; for 
she ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She 
ought to be reserved to a war, the weight of which, with 
the enemies that we are most likely to have, must be con- 25 
siderable in her quarter of the globe. There she may 
serve you, and serve you essentially. 

l^j. For that service, for all service, whether of reve- 
nue, trade or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British 
Constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close 30 
affection which grows from common names, from kindred 
blood, from similar privileges and equal protection. 



TRUE NATURE OF EMPIRE. 79 

These are ties which, though Hght as air, are as strong as 
Hnks of iron. . Let the colonies always keep the idea of 
their civil rights associated with. your government, — they 
will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven 

5 will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But 
let it be once understood that your government may be 
one thing and their privileges another ; that these two 
things may exist without any mutual relation, the cement 
is gone, the cohesion is loosened and everything hastens 

lo to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wis- 
dom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as 
the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to 
our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of 
England worship freedom, they will turn their faces to- 

15 wards you. The more they multiply, the more friends 
you will have ; the more ardently they love liberty, the 
more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can 
have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. 
They may have it from Spain ; they may have it from 

20 Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your 
true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can 
have from none but you. This is the commodity of 
price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true 
Act of Navigation which binds to you the commerce of 

25 the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth 
of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, 
and you break that sole bond which originally made and 
must still preserve .the unity of the empire. Do not en- 
tertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and 

30 your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your 
cockets and your clearances, are what form the great 
securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your 



8o ON C0NCILIA770N IVITII AMERICA. 

letters of office and your instructions and your suspend- 
ing clauses are the things that hold together the great 
contexture of the mysterious whole. These things do 
not make your government. Dead instruments, passive 
tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English commun- 5 
ion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the 
spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through 
the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, 
vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the mi- 
nutest membef. 10 

/j<§. Is it not the same virtue which does everything 
for us here in England ? Do you imagine, then, that it 
is the Land Tax Act which raises your revenue ? that it 
is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which 
gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which 15 
inspires it with bravery and discipline ? No ! surely no ! 
It is the love of the people ; it is their attachment to their 
government, from the sense of the deep stake they have 
in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 
and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience 20 
without which your army would be a base rabble, and 
your navy nothing but rotten timber. 

i^g. All this, I know well enough, will sound wild 
and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and 
mechanical politicians who have no place among us, — a 25 
sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is 
gross and material ; and who, therefore, far from being 
qualified to be directors of the great movement of em- 
pire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to 
men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and 30 
master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I 
have mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth 



SURSUM CORD A! 8i 

everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not 
seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little 
minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our station, 
and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our situa- 

5 tion and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public 
proceedings on America with the old warning of the 
church, Sursum corda / We ought to elevate our minds 
to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Provi- 
dence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this 

10 high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilder- 
ness into a glorious empire ; and have made the most ex- 
tensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by de- 
stroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the 
happiness of the human race. Let us get an American 

15 revenue as we have got an American empire. English 
privileges have made it all that it is j English privileges 
alone will make it all it can be. 

140. In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I 
now (j7wd felix faustumque sit f) lay the first stone of 

20 the Temple of Peace ; and I move you, — 

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
25 burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- 
ment. 



Upon this resolution the previous question was put and 
carried: for the previous* question, 270; against it, 78. 

As the propositions were opened separately in the body 

30 of the speech, the reader perhaps may wish to see the 

whole of them together in the form in which they were 



82 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

moved for. The first four motions and the last had the 
previous question put on them. The others were nega- 
tived. The words in itaUcs were, by an amendment that 
was carried, left out of the motion ; which will appear in 
the journals, though it is not the practice to insert such 5 
amendments in the votes. 

Moved, 

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taining two milHons and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 10 
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- 
ment. 

That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to, and 
bounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given 15 
and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
tions have not their knights and burgesses in the said high court 
of Parliament, of their own election, to represent the condition of 
their country ; by lack whereof they have been oftentimes touched 
and grieved by subsidies given, granted and assented to, in the said 20 
court, in a manner prejudicial to the com?nonwealth, quietness, rest 
and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same. 

That, from the distance of the said colonies and from other 
circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring 
a representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 25 

That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen 
in part or in the whole by the freemen, freeholders or other free 
inhabitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or gen- 
eral court ; with powers legally to raise, levy and assess, according 
' to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 2P 
defraying all sorts of public services. 

That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies 
legally (qualified ^s aforesaid, have at sundry tinies freely granted 



THE RESOLUTIONS. %i 

several large subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, 
according to their abilities, vi'hen required thereto by letter from 
one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state ; and that their 
right to grant the same and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the 
5 said grants have been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament. 

That it hath been found by experience that the manner of grant- 
ing the said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath 
been more agreeable to the said colonies, and more beneficial and 
conducive to the public service, than the mode of giving and grant- 
lo ing aids in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the said colonies. 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the seventh year 
of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for granting 
certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America ; 
for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs upon the expor- 
ts tation from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoanuts of the produce 
of the said colonies or plantations ; for discontinuing the draw- 
backs payable on China earthenware exported to America; and 
for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods in 
the said colonies and plantations," 

20 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act to discon- 
tinue, in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, 
the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares 
and merchandise, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in 

25 the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America." 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for the 
impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned 
for any acts done by them in the execution of the law, or for the 
20 suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of Massachusetts 
Bay, in New England." 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 



84 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, "An act for the 
better regulating the government of the province of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay, in New England." 

That it may be proper to explain and amend an act made in the 
thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, entitled, 5 
"An act for the trial of treasons committed out of the king's 
dominions." 

That from the time when the general assembly, or general court, 
of any colony or plantation in North America shall have appointed 
by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to the offices of lo 
the chief justice and other judges of the superior court, it may be 
proper that the said chief justice and other judges of the superior 
courts of such colony shall hold his and their office and offices 
during their good behavior, and shall not be removed therefrom 
but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in 15 
council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general assembly, 
or on a complaint from the governor or council or the house of rep- 
resentatives, severally, of the colony in which the said chief justice 
and other judges have exercised the said offices. 

That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or 20 
vice-admiralty authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth^of 
George the Third, in such a manner as to make the same more 
commodious to those who sue or are sued in the said courts ; and 
to provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in the 
sat?ie. 25 



NOTES 

I. Every consideration calls upon us for care in 
dealing with America. 

\\\. Austerity of the Chair is a formal expression, having no 
personal reference to Sir Fletcher Norton, who was Speaker, — a 
man petulant rather than austere. Burke wishes to ingratiate him- 
self with the House by complimenting it in the person of its chair- 
man. 

1 : 3. Human frailty : One of many examples in the speech* 
of humility assumed for the sake of oratorical effect. 

Oratorical egotism — the assumption of humility or its opposite, 
complacency, in addressing an audience — was characteristic of De- 
mosthenes and Cicero. Burke and other British orators of what 
might now be called the " old school," were proud to adopt what 
they regarded as an elegant and useful practice. Cicero was, in a 
special sense, Burke's model. 

1:8. To my infinite surprise, etc., is evidence that the intro- 
ductory paragraph was unpremeditated. The speech as a whole 
was extempore in form, though of course in substance it had been 
most carefully studied. It was written out and edited by Burke 
himself for publication. 

The grand penal bill: Burke's name for a measure which had 
been proposed by Lord North, February 10, 1775, ^^^ weeks before 
Burke delivered the present speech. The New England colonies, 
especially Massachusetts, were to be punished for the obstinate op- 
position they had shown towards England's recent efforts to regu- 
late their commerce, England 'had insisted that she had the right 
to control the importation of tea into the colonies. The opposition 
aroused by this claim was intensified by other acts of Parliament, 
such as quartering troops upon the colonists, interfering with the 
judiciary of Massachusetts, and annulling her charter. On the 

85 



86 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 

other hand, the colonists were so adroit in eluding the grasp of Par- 
liament, and so united in an increasingly bold course of opposition, 
that the king and his chief adviser thought it now high time to ad- 
minister severe and sweeping discipline. They proposed by this 
grand penal bill, to confine the trade of the New England colonies 
to Great Britain, Irelayid and the British West Indies ; and to re- 
strict their fishing privileges on the Grand Banks. 

Throughout the six weeks preceding the speech on Conciliation, 
Burke had fought this bill on two grounds, — justice to the colonies 
and profit to English trade and revenue. When Lord North ar- 
gued that New England must be made obedient, Burke answered 
that this bill was an absurd means to such an end, for at best it 
would preserve only the forms of government, and these at the ex- 
pense of the liberty and contentment of the governed. Burke 
also showed that to suspend the trade of the colonists would render 
them unable to pay their debts to English creditors. Finally, on 
the 8th of May, protesting against the passage of the bill, he re- 
marked in sarcastic desperation, — This bill " does not mean to shed 
blood ; but to suit some gentleman's humanity, it only means to 
starve five hundred thousand people." 

The speech on Conciliation is really a part of Burke's fight against 
this " grand penal bill," and another similar piece of Lord North's 
statesmanship. The peculiar strength of Burke's opposition con- 
sists in the wisdom of the policy he proposed as substitute for that 
which he attacked. But, though it was not yet known in England, 
neither wise nor foolish legislation was of much avail when the 
penal bill was passed, for the battles of Lexington and Concord 
had been fought three weeks before. 

I ; lo. Returned to us from the other house : with the request 
to amend it so as to include New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, 
Virginia and South Carolina ! 

I : i6. By the return, etc. : Burke tries to persuade an indif- 
ferent house to face the American problem in a serious spirit. 

2. I feel an oppressive responsibility regarding the 
imperial policy towards the colonies. 

2:5. When I first, etc. : 1766, in time to help repeal the 
Stamp Act. 



NOTES. 87 

2:12. To take more than common pains ^ etc. : Here is humility 
employed to inspire earnest attention on the part of his hearers. 
But there is no reason to suppose they saw the point of Burke's re- 
marks. Probably the closing sentence of the paragraph appealed 
to a few. Burke had really labored to learn all there was to be 
known about America, with a success that is evident on every page 
of this speech. 

2 : 15. General policy of the British Empire : Burke was the 
first practical British statesman to formulate a system of political 
economy in its broadest sense, — the principles of imperial govern- 
ment. 

3. The position I took in 1766, has not changed. 

2 : 25. A large majority : The Stamp Act was repealed by a 
vote of 275 to 161. 

4. The vacillation of Parliament has caused inde- 
scribable complications in American affairs. 

3:1. An enlarged view over the vast area of special interests, 
n&t American, which were guarded by the members of Parliament. 

5. Mr. Fuller persuaded me that the opposition inust 
take the offensive. 

3:18. A worthy member : Mr. Rose Fuller, who moved to re-' 
peal the Tea Tax, April 19, 1 774, when Burke delivered his speech 
on American Taxation. 

3 : 22. Our politics : of Burke's party. 

3 : 24. The public tribunal: popular sentiment, in which alone 
lay Burke's hope of success. 

6. I drew up resolutions, but hesitated to present 
them. 

4 : 15. Gave so far into, etc. : yielded to the extent of formu- 
lating resolutions. Now, five months later, they are produced. 

4 : 22. Disreputably : with danger to one's reputation. Burke 
hopes to disarm prejudice by emphasizing his hesitancy. 

7. Public welfare now demands their presentation. 
4: 27. Paper government : theory severed from practice, such 

as Locke's adaptation of the feudal system for the government of 
North Carolina. 



88 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

It is not to be supposed that Burke regarded his resolutions as 
theoretical, but that he feared lest they should be so regarded by 
others. He hopes to inspire confidence by overstating his own 
caution. 

8. My own insignificance has made me bold. 

5:14. Judging of what you are, etc. : a high standard for the 
best of men, entirely too high for the parliament to which Burke 
spoke. Yet we are not to suppose him blind to their ignorance or 
duplicity. He overstates their merit, hoping thus to make them 
rise towards his position. This is a kind of optimism we see prac- 
tised every day, and it is certainly true that the more good one ex- 
pects to find, the more one is likely to find. 

The degree of impartial good judgment Burke ascribes to the 
House is really superhuman. No legislature accepts a proposi- 
tion solely because it is reasonable, or rejects one solely because it 
is futile or dangerous. The motives which actuate such bodies are 
complex, and more or less selfish. Considering how unusually 
corrupt and stupid was the present House, Burke must have smiled 
to himself as he uttered the flattering lines, — " You will see it just 
as it is, and you will treat it just as it deserves." 

g. My resolutions propose to reconcile America, by 
restoring her former confidence in the mother cou7itry. 

5 : 25. The proposition is peace : Here is the theme of the ora- 
tion. This paragraph contains the key to every line of thought in 
the speech. Note especially the line of destructive argument im- 
plied in lines 25-32. 

5/; 28. Universal discord foniented from principle : One of Lord 
North's objects was to divide the colonies by jealousies so as to 
simplify the problem of governing them. He even admitted in de- 
bate that his policy was Divide et impera. 

5:30. Juridical: according to the letter of the law, rather 
than in a spirit of justice. 

6 : 4. Former unsuspecting confidence, etc. : a phrase used by 
the Continental Congress to describe the effect of the repeal of the 
Stamp Act. Burke was struck by the expression, and used it not 
only in this speech, but in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,-— 



NOTES. 89 

" This unsuspecting confidence is the true centre of gravity amongst 
mankind, about which all the parts are at rest." 

10, My plan is far simpler than the project of 
Lord North. 

6 : 10. Refined : elaborate. The general statements contained 
in this and the two succeeding sentences are not theoretical, though 
they have the appearance of being so. They are generalized from 
actual human experience. They differ from theory as much as 
observation differs from imagination. It is important to make this 
distinction because throughout the speech Burke uses generaliza- 
tions from fact and experience, and, at the same time, scouts the 
use of mere theory. 

6 : 19. Pruriency : itching, curiosity. 

6:21. The project : Burke's name for Lord North's Proposi- 
tions/or Conciliating the Differences with America. 

This project, together with the grand penal bill, forms the means 
by which Lord North hoped to reduce America to submission. 
The penal bill sought to punish the colonies for their opposition to 
unfair restrictions upon trade; while this project had for its 
avowed object, the separation of the " reasonable from the unrea- 
sonable," that is, of those who gave up all the natural rights of a 
subject, from those who would not. | It proposed that Parlia^nent 
should control the public funds of all the American colonies. King 
and Parliament were to fix the proportion of funds for common de- 
fence to be paid by each colony ; and to approve or disapprove the 
afnount each colony offered to subscribe for the support of its civil 
and judicial system. If a colony came quietly to terms, offering a 
subscription satisfactory to King and Parliament, these powers 
would look upon it with friendly eyes, and, except in the way of 
levying duties upon its importations into England, would not tax 
it further. Herein lay the conciliatory feature of North's scheme. 

But this bill was not merely a test of the subserviency of such 
colonies as had not appeared restive ; it was, and Lord North so 
planned it, a subtle means of producing jealousy and discord 
among the colonies towards one another, which would render some 
of the colonies the allies of England, in her punitive attitude to- 
wards the rest. For instance, it was hoped that New York would 



90 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

join England against Massachusetts, and thus give a strong moral 
support to the disciplinary acts of the mother country. 

As a matter of fact, this sort of legislation had already worked 
just the other way. The colonies had made common cause against 
their common oppressor, and in this new emergency they took the 
same course. All but Georgia sent representatives to Philadelphia 
to protest against such " conciliatory " measures. 

6 : 22. Noble lord in the blue ribbon : a conventional compli- 
ment to Lord North, who was " noble lord " by courtesy only, his 
father being still alive. It was thus he could hold a seat in the 
lower house. He was a Knight of the Garter, and therefore was 
entitled to wear as garter the blue ribbon embroidered, honi soit qui 
vial y pense. 

6 : 24. Colony agents : persons employed by the colonies to 
look after their respective interests in Parliament. Burke was 
agent for New York. 

6 : 27, Auction of fijiance : implies that the representatives of 
the various colonies when ,they came to Parliament to settle the 
proportion of payments called for in the project of Lord North, 
would one after another keep on increasing their bids for royal 
favor till the auctioneer, whoever that might be, should be satisfied 
with their offers. 

In such a scheme there are several elements of absurdity. 
First, it would be very hard to determine the total sum to be 
raised ; second, it would be impossible justly to proportion this to 
the abilities of the various colonies; third, every concession on the 
part of one colony would encourage a demand by Parliament for 
corresponding concessions from all the others; finally, there was 
no reason why they should make Parliament the arbiter of their 
financial operations. Burke evidently uses the term " auction " to 
cast ridicule upon a plan so elaborate as to be impracticable, and 
one sure to beget jealousies among colonies bidding for the favor 
of the King. 

II. But Lord North's avowed purpose of concili- 
ating America is a great advantage to my motion. 

7 : 2. The idea of conciliation is the nominal purpose of Lord 
North's project. It suits Burke to regard this as his real desire. 



NOTES. 91 

12. It is evident that Parliament is conscious of 
error in its treatment of America. 

7:21. Alien from all the ancient methods, etc. : modern usage 
requires alien to. 

Burke is to build his plan on conservative lines. The italics in 
\ 9 indicate the same thing. 

I J. Acting on NortK s principle ^ I intend to concili- 
ate America, but by other means. 

7 : 28. On the admitted principle : The remainder of the para- 
graph is devoted to showing how the field looks from this ground. 

7 : 29. Peace implies reconciliation : There is no distinction to 
be taken account of between reconciliation here, and conciliation 
as it is used in the title of the speech. 

7 : 30. Material dispute : a disagreement over tangible posses- 
sions or specific rights. The word material generally means 
merely important, but here has the force of excluding those dis- 
putes in which the two parties might properly agree to disagree ; 
as, for example, matters of taste, or faith. 

8 : 2. Great and acknowledged force : A big Newfoundland is 
respected the more because he forgives and .pities the yelping 
puppy. Gulliver amongst the Lilliputians affords perhaps a better 
parallel. , 

8 : 6. The concessions of the weak, etc. : This was just the chief 
reason why the colonies would concede nothing to England. 

14. The advisability of concession by England de- 
pends on the nature and circumstances of the colonies. 

8:12. The capital leading questions : Thus is introduced the 
central topic of discussion. It has been said that a question well 
asked is half answered. 

8 : 15. We have gained some ground : referring of course to 
the ostensibly conciliatory purpose of North's project. 

8:21. The true nature and the peculiar circumstances : It 
will be interesting to see whether Burke divides his study of the 
American problem according to these heads, or whether he is 
vaguely using two terms when the first would be enough alone. 



92 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

Compare the closing sentence of this paragraph with the opening 
sentences of the 15th and ly.th. 

/5. America has a big and growiiig population. 

9 : 9. The true number : The best authorities consider Burke's 
estimate rather below the mark. 

9:13. Population shoots : It is thought the gain in the decade 
preceding this speech was 500,000. 
^16. So large a mass of people must not be trifled with. 

9 : 25. A blunter discernment than yours : a bungling attempt at 
compliment. 

9 : 27. Occasional system : fit only for the special emergency 
or occasion which now demands attention. 

ij. Their commercial interests are disproportion- 
ately great. 

10 : 14. A distinguished person : Richard Glover, a merchant 
who wrote dull verses and dabbled in politics. Burke strangely 
wastes words upon him. Bar : an oak rail across the entrance to 
the main aisle or floor of the House. Outsiders wishing to address 
the House stood at this bar. 

18. Properly examined^ these will surely command 
the respect of Parliament. 

ig. I will compare the trade statistics for the years 
1704 and 1772. 

20. I have included under exports to America, those 
to Africa and the West Indies. 

11 : 16. Ter?ninating ahnost wholly in the colonies: A slave 
was purchased, not with money, but with articles bought in Eng- 
land. So the purchase of a slave for America would mean to the 
English merchant the same thing as the exportation to America of 
his value in English merchandise. 

II : 18. The West Indian : dependent for commerce and for 
protection upon the colonies on the Continent. 

21. In 1704 the total trade to the colonies amounted 
to about six hundred thousand pounds. 

22. In 1772, to six millions. 



NOTES. 93 

2j. In that year England exported to the colonies 
alone y almost as much as in 1704 to the whole world. 

12 : 9. No less than twelvefold : a skilful repetition and con- 
densation, for the purpose of making his statistics tell. Compare 
the opening of the next paragraph. 

24. As England values one-third of her export 
trade she will legislate wisely for the colonies, 

25. This marvelous expansion has taken place in 
the lifetime of a single man. 

13 : 24. Acta parentum, etc. : to study the example of his fore- 
fathers and to learn what virtue is. (Virgil, fourth Eclogue.) 

Like many others of Burke's quotations, Latin or English, this 
is not verbatim. Sometimes the variation is evidently accidental, 
but more often it is due to Burke's facile shaping of the extract to 
suit his precise purpose. 

13:30' The third prince : George III., whose father, Fred- 
erick, died as Prince of Wales. 

14:1. To be made Great Britain: In 1 707 the Treaty of 
Union joined Scotland to England. 

14:2. Turn back the current: After Henry Bathurst was 
appointed Lord Chancellor in 177 1, his father was made an earl, 
while he himself became a baron ; distinctions thus passing from 
son to father, in a degree, rather than from father to son. 

Burke naturally selected Lord Bathurst for the purposes of this 
paragraph, both because he had lived a life of extraordinary 
length and public activity, and because such congratulatory re- 
marks would please certain members of the government. Earl 
Bathurst was a typical member of that House of Lords which had 
just returned the penal bill with emphatic approval. 

26. Pennsylvania^ s imports in 1772 were fifty times 
as great as in 1704. "■ " 

27. The truth about American commerce is stranger 
than fiction. 

28. A study of colonial importations into England 
would lead to the saine conclusion. 



94 ON- CONCiLIATldN WITH AM^klCA. 

15 : 17. Deceive : a translation oi fuller e^ which has in Latin 
the same double sense. 

2g. The extensive agriculture of the colonies is a 
necessity to England. 

16 ; 2. Roman charity: Cymon, being condemned to starve 
in prison, was kept alive by his daughter Xanthippe, with milk 
from her own breast. (Hyginus.) A similar story is told of 
Euphrasia and Evander. 

JO. Their energy and courage in the fisheries are 

admirable. 

16 : 20. The antipodes : the Southern seas. 

16 : 21. Serpent : Hydrus, a small constellation in the extreme 
south; not Hydra, which lies within 35° of the equator. 

Falkland Island : The Falkland Islands were ceded to Eng- 
land by Spain in 177 1. Before that time they had been regarded 
as " too remote an object for the grasp of national ambition." 

16 : 22, Romantic suggests the Atlantis fable. 

16 : 27, Draw the line and strike the harpoon : fish and whale. 

16:28. Run the longitude: sail in a generally southerly (or 
northerly) direction. There is some doubt as to Burke's familiarity 
with sailor talk ; this expression is not now common, nor can it be 
ascertained that it ever was. But the idea is plain enough, that, 
starting from their New England home port, the whalers would 
run south along the sixtieth meridian of longitude, to the coast of 
Brazil. 

The common nautical expression " to run down the longitude " 
means a different thing, and could not have been in Burke's mind. 

17:1. Dexterous and firm sagacity: This and other expres- 
sions in this paragraph seem to indicate that Burke is approaching 
the subject of the nature of the colonies. Or is their nature only 
one of the circumstances affecting the general problem ? This 
question will be settled quite clearly in the end, but it is well to 
try to anticipate that settlement. See lines 10-12 and 16. 
'^^V 17 : 10. A wise and salutary neglect : This phrase is entitled 
to special consideration, as the key" to Burke's' solution of the 
Colonial problem. 



17 : 15. Human contrivances : An incidental reference to the 
project. 

jz. Such colonies will be better controlled by pru- 
dence than by force. 

17 : 20. A different conclusion^ etc. : At this point begins a 
digression, the object of which is to win over some members who, 
angry at the colonial spirit of liberty, rely on arms to subdue it. 
Burke supposes it useless to present arguments in favor of his res- 
olutions to such men, till he has tried to persuade them of the 
foolishness of their own doctrine. The four objections to the use 
of force occupy only one page ; but they are so cogent and so 
clearly put that if they had not fallen on sterile ground they would 
have proved good seeds of peace. Probably they actually resulted 
in shaking the inner convictions of the fighters just enough to 
render their actions the more obstinate and prompt. The firstlings 
of their hearts became the firstlings of their hands, — at Bunker 
Hill. 

17 : 30. Considering force not as an odious, etc. : This closing 
passage may be regarded as summing up the preceding discussion. 
With all its brevity it safely avoids needless antagonism by harsh 
words. The phrase profitable and subordinate is especially pol- 
itic, since it emphasizes the agreement of Burke's ultimate aim 
with that of the majority. 

jJ: Force may temporarily subdue ; it cannot govern. 

jjt Force might not subdue ; then England would 
be without resource. 

18:8. Terror is not always, etc. : American history is full of 
examples, besides the Revolution. How does it compare in this 
respect^with the history of England? Of Holland ? 

j»^ Force at best could not give tcs America intact. 

j£; Experience advises against it. 

jSl Moreover the character of the Americans de- 
mands a different policy. 

19 : 13. Temper and character : This looks as if Burke were 
going to make a special discussion of the nature of the colonists, 



96 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

apart from their numbers or commercial importance. Can the 
facts about the nature of the Americans that appear in the preced- 
ing discussion be regarded as subordinate to the facts about their 
material activities, — explanatory details used to expound with due 
emphasis, the circumstances of the colonists ? If here we find the 
opposite course followed, and material circumstances used to ex- 
pound the nature of the men, we shall feel sure what Burke intended. 
Upon consideration, it is evident the two ideas cannot be divorced, 
but only presented in altered relation to each other. 

J7. There are six reasons why the spirit of liberty 
is stronger in our colonists than in any other people. 

19 : 19. Shujffle, etc. : another strong figure drawn from the 
game of cards. Gambling was the chief recreation of high society 
in Burke's day. 

j8. America inherits the English belief that self- 
taxation is the crucial test of liberty. 

19 : 28. / hope, respects, etc. : Burke deplored the surrender 
of much popular power to the King. Of course the people's atti- 
tude toward America was the direct moral result of this surrender. 

19 : 30. Emigrated from ^^2/ .*, during the religious and polit- 
ical excitements which marked the reigns of the Stuart kings. 

20 : 3. Abstract liberty : As usual Burke explains this gen- 
eral statement in the following sentences. It is open to question 
whether this kind of argument was best adapted to convince the 
Parliament to which Burke was speaking. How would it appeal 
to our House ? To our Senate ? 

20 : 22. Blind usages : having their origin not in intelligible 
principles, but in ancient and forgotten precedents. 

21 : 7. I do not say, etc. : This disclaims the application of 
the right of self-taxation to the colonies. Such indifference must 
at first appear to surrender the American cause. But with char- 
acteristic grasp upon the conduct of the case, Burke reverts to this 
point fifteen pages later, and makes his strongest argument out of 
an apparently fatal disclaimer. 

jp. The A7nerican assemblies have ^cultivated the love 
of self-government. 



NOTES, 97 

40. The Protestant religion has intensified the love 
of liberty in the North. 

22 : 19. Dissidence of dissent, etc. : as we say the " very quint- 
essence," etc. The expression defies analysis, because it is higher 
than analysis. 

41. Slavery has had the same effect in the South. 

23 : 28. Gothic : commonly misused in the Eighteenth century, 
for Saxon. 

23 : 29. The Poles : In 1772 occurred the partition of Poland 
and the consequent leveling of her classes. Compare page 5, 
line 2. 

42. The universal study of law has armed the col- 
onists for self-defence. 

24 : 15. Blackstone^s Commentaries on the laws of England, 
published 1769. 

24 : 16. General Gage, after being commander-in-chief of the 
English army in America for several years, became governor of 
Massachusetts in 1774. When he tried to enforce the act of Par- 
liament prohibiting town-meetings as likely to stir up sedition, the 
Boston selectmen were too clever for him. They simply adjourned 
the meeting from July to August, from August to October, and re- 
ferred Governor Gage to the crown lawyers. 

24 : 27. Will disdain that ground : Burke probably thought 
he had just stated the ground on which his friend, Attorney-Gen- 
eral Thurlow, was preparing to refute. So, in plain words, Burke 
said, " You may be foolish enough to try to make a point out of 
this legal knowledge of the colonists. Here it is, all made before 
you could get your notes down ; and now I'll show you how little 
it is worth." 

Part of this paragraph was evidently unpremeditated. It seems 
to have been sharpened by Burke's effort to steal Thurlow's 
thunder. The taking of notes in Parliament is an unusual 
proceeding. Ancient etiquette frowns upon any extensive prac- 
tice of it. 

25 : I . Abeunt studia in mores : studies pass over into character. 
Ovid, Heroides, xv., 83. 



98 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

4j. The ocea7i delays and weakens England'' s gov- 
ernment in America. 

25 : 14. No contrivance : Steam and electricity have almost 
proved Burke a false prophet. 

25 : 22, So far shalt thou go, etc. : King Canute's application 
of this remark to the instruction of his court is familiar. The book 
of Job contains the same thought in grander sequence. (Chapter 38. ) 

44. From these six sources has the spirit of liberty 
sprung. 

4^. This spirit must be properly met by England 
if her government is to succeed. 

26 : 32. What, in the name of God, etc. : This question para- 
phrases the one in paragraph 14. A good deal of progress has 
been made in the statement of facts since that preliminary question 
was put. 

27:6. We are called upon to fix, etc. : This takes us back to 
the very beginning of the speech. But see note on page 30, 
line 4. 

27: II. Still more untractable form : Stamp Act, Tea Tax, 
bills of pains and penalties, war, independence — this indicates the 
actual climax, 

27 : 19. An emanation from yours : evidence of the " wise and 
salutary policy " of neglecting the colonies. It was in the fifth year 
of the reign of George III. that this policy was rudely laid aside, 
and that trouble began. The financial aim of Grenville was to 
make America pay a part of the debt of ^^82,000,000 incurred by 
Pitt in the war with France. 

27 : 25. An operose business : Gladstone's remark about the 
constitution of the United States emphasizes this idea. 

27 : 30. Another way : In Massachusetts and Virginia the 
government had been carried on for some time in absolute defiance 
of their respective governors. Gage and Dunmore. 

28 : 13. A manufacture, etc. : an echo of the discussion of paper 
government, ^ 7. See note. 

46. The present state of things in Massachusetts 
shows how England has failed. 



NOTES. 99 

28 : 23. Abrogated the ancient government, etc. : by the " Act 
for the better regulating the government of the Province of the 
Massachusetts Bay in New^ England." 

The assembly w^as still to be elected by the people ; but the 
council w^as to be appointed by the king, all law^-officers by the 
governor, and all jurymen by the sheriff. The law also required 
town-rheetings to be called by the governor. We have seen how 
this measure was evaded ; and as to the working of the rest of the 
act, see lines 26-32. 

29:8. / am much against, etc. : If we follow out this thought 
we shall get some light on Burke's attitude toward the French 
Revolutionists. But in their case Burke traced the fault to the 
people ; not, as in this, to the ruler. 

4'j. There is no course open but change^ prosecu- 
tion, or compliance. 

29 : 28. An equal attention : One is entitled to suppose that the 
empty or listless benches here struck Burke's notice for a moment. 

30 : 4. Another : Dean Tucker's, which though not conceived 
iji a statesmanlike spirit, was wiser than Burke thought it. 

The argument by exclusion which begins here, consists of a con- 
sideration of the three possible courses of action, in the light of the 
nature and circumstances of the colonists. It is demonstrated that 
neither of the first two is feasible, but that the third is a practica- 
ble and wise course. It is now possible to see how much progress 
has b)een made toward fixing a policy. The conditions of the 
problem are before us. 

48. To change the spirit of liberty is impracticable. 

4.g.: oEngland has no power to check the grqwth of 
population. 

30 : 29. To raise the value, etc. : Such an easy reference to a 
principle of political economy should remind us that Burke was a 

4 pioneer in this field of statesmanship. 

V^^o. To attempt it by dispossessing them of the royal 
\rants, wotild be futile, un7iatural and unconstitutional. 

31 : 10. From thence they behold, etc. : evidence of Burke's 
knowledge of American geography. It was more accurate than 



100 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

that of the nobleman who left the - office of colonial secretary 
after many years of service (?) believing New England to be an 
island. 

31:18. Become masters, etc. : What a subject for a cartoon ! 

31 : 20. All the slaves .- This is another side of the same truth 
that Pitt uttered in Parliament when it was announced that the 
Americans were resisting the Stamp Act. " In my opinion, this 
kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies. . . . Sir, I 
rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so 
dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be 
slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the 
rest." 

3 1 : 23. Increase and multiply : This passage suggests the 
problem of the Pharaohs in dealing with the Israelites. On the 
other hand it forms an interesting commentary on the present popu- 
lation of France. Whereas the Jewish captives were required to 
make *' bricks without straw," and to perform other kinds of ex- 
hausting labor, in order that their numbers might be reduced, 
France is thinking of offering premiums for good old-fashioned 
families. 

31 : 25. Lazr of wild beasts : a reference to the " royal wilder- 
ness " of paragraph 49. 

31 : 27. Our policy hitherto : Repeating the thought in para- 
graph 17, " wise and salutary neglect." Eventually this idea will 
dominate in the speech. 

57. Hedging-in the colonists is neither prudent nor 
practicable. 

52. To impoverish the colonies would make them 
first unserviceable, then rebellious. 

32:10. Their marine enterprises: Burke takes three para- 
graphs to treat the circumstance, population, in its bearing on the 
first mode of procedure. But here in paragraph 52, he treats the 
remaining circumstances, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, all 
under one head, marine enterprises. He saw that agriculture was 
significant only from the commercial pointy of view. 

To take a profound view of related particulars is one of the 



II 



NOTES. loi 



marks of a statesman. Burke showed in paragraph 20, a similar 
insight regarding the African and West Indian trade. 

32 : 23. A little preposterous : In this sentence Burke reduces 
the « method " to an absurdity. He deals with it in like manner 
from the point of view successively of every one of the six causes 
of the spirit of liberty. Then he takes up the second « method." 

33:1. Spoliatis arma supersunt : To the impoverished re- 
mains the privilege of insurrection. (Juvenal, eighth Satire.) 

53. The spirit of liberty was born in the English 
colonists and breathes in their language. 

33 : 5. Fierce: because passionately fond of freedom. 
33 : 9. Detect : reveal. 

54' It lives in their religion, education, and form 
of government. 

33 : 17- Confide to : now confide in. 

ZZ ' 27. Chargeable : expensive. 

33 : 29. Kept in obedience : Mr. Hammond Lamont quotes 
from Burke's Address to the King, " That the establishment of such 
a [military] power in America will utterly ruin our finances— 
though its certain effect— is the smallest part of our concern. It 
will become an apt, powerful, and certain engine for the destruc- 
tion of our freedom here. Great bodies of armed men, trained to 
a contempt of popular assemblies representative of an English 
people,— kept up for the purpose of exacting impositions without 
their consent, and maintained by that exaction,-instruments in 
subverting, without any process of law, great ancient establish- 
ments and respected forms of governments,-set free from, and 
therefore above, the ordinary English tribunals of the country 
where they serve,— these men cannot so transform themselves 
merely by crossing the sea, as to behold with love and reverence, 
and submit with profound obedience to, the very same things in 
Great Britain which in America they had been taught to despise, 
and had been accustomed to awe and humble." 
, 55' To enfranchise the slaves in order to enslave 
t/ieir masters is an absurd proposition. 

56, Such a proposition is an impossible hypocrisy. 



I02 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

34 : 15. As : though. 

34 : 19. One of whose causes of quarrel, etc. : This is one of 
Burke's characteristic turns of thought which flood a situation with 
light No wonder he felt he could afford to spend a moment in 
the whimsical illustrations which follow. 

57. Then the ocean remains. 

^8. If the spirit of liberty cannot he changed^ shall 
it be prosecuted as criminal ? 

35 : 9. The late exercise of our authority : All the seriously 
irritating legislation had taken place within the preceding decade. 

j'p. To prosecute a nation as if it were a band of 
criminals y would be neither wise 7ior decent. 

35 : 15. Too big: Here again begins the discussion of that 
circumstance^ population. This is the only item fully discussed in 
this connection. Hereafter Burke takes it for granted that the 
nature and circumstances of the colonies are clearly in the minds 
of the members. A more methodical debater would have clung to 
his formal analysis ; but to drop that and not lose in force of argu- 
ment proves the master. Burke's genius is shown not so much by 
the plan of the speech, as by the fact that the speech is powerful in 
spite of interruptions and alterations of the plan. 

35 : 20. Civil dissensions : There are several such terms in 
this paragraph, used to impress Parliament with the need of rea- 
son in dealing with America. 

35 : 28. Sir Edward Coke : Burke evidently draws a mental 
parallel between this infamous magistrate and the party which 
would indict the American people. The type of justice dispensed 
by this Elizabethan Attorney-General may be seen in a citation 
from the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh — 

" At the repeating of some things Sir Walter Raleigh inter- 
rupted him (Coke), and said he did him wrong. 

" Coke. Thou art the most vile and execrable traitor that ever 
lived. 

" Raleigh. You speak indiscreetly, barbarously, and uncivilly. 

" Coke. I want words sufficient to express thy viperous treasons,' ' 

35 : 30. Ripe : ready. 



NOTES. 103 

36 : I. Upon the very same title : Burke may have thought 
here of his own birthplace. At any rate he sums up in this phrase, 
all the claims of the colonists to English citizenship, and therefore 
to Parliamentary consideration. 

60. A province cannot claim a privilege without 
confessing itself under imperial authority. 

36 : 6. Distinguished from a single state : Compare lines 16- 
26 of the preceding paragraph. 

36 : 10. Constitutions : here used concretely. 

36 : 12. Many local privileges : Compare the last half of para- 
graph 43. 

36 : 19. Ex vi termini : from the very meaning of the term, 

36 : 31. Will it not teach them, etc. : Another powerful turn 
of thought. Does its brilliancy arise from the speaker's intense 
sympathy with the colonists ? 

61. If England prosecutes America, she must act 
as her own Judge, and in a very questionable way. 

37 • 5- ^' ^^"^ indeed, etc. : Here Burke returns to the question 
of criminal procedure. The preceding paragraph may be re- 
garded as a digression into the philosophy of imperial govern- 
ment. Can you find the results of the digression used in para- 
graph 62 ? 

37 : 17. Right: The play on this veord in line 19 is justified 
by the context. 

37 : 21. The most vexatious of all injustice : Compare Cicero, 
— summum jus^ summum injuria, — the extreme of the law is the 
extreme of injustice. 

37 : 23. Civil litigant in point of right is balanced with whose 
moral quality, etc.; culprit before me, with while I sit as a crimi- 
nal judge, etc. 

62. The experiment in Massachtcsetts in this mode 
of criminal procedure has not succeeded. 

38:3. Have seemed to adopt that mode : The bearing of the 
Massachusetts case upon the wisdom of the grand penal bill is di- 
rect and forcible. It shows up both the principles and the legisla- 
tors involved, V^hen BurUe speaks of criminal proceedings 



I04 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

against America, it is such bills and such men that he has in 
mind. 

38 : 5. Formerly addressed : In 1777 Burke wrote to the 
sheriffs of Bristol as follows : " It is necessary, gentlemen, to ap- 
prise you that there is an act, made so long ago as in the reign of 
Henry VIII., before the existence or thought of any English col- 
onies in America, for the trial in this kingdom of treasons com- 
mitted out of the realm. In the year 1769 Parliament thought 
proper to acquaint the Crown with their construction of that act in 
a formal address, wherein they entreated his Majesty to cause per- 
sons charged with high treason in America to be brought into this 
kingdom for trial. By this act of Henry VIII., so construed and 
so applied, almost all that is substantial and beneficial in a trial by 
jury is taken away from the subject in the colonies. This is, how- 
ever, saying too little ; for to try a man under that act is, in effect, 
to condemn him unheard. A person is brought hither in the dun- 
geon of a ship's hold ; thence he is vomited into a dungeon on 
land, loaded with irons, unfurnished with money, unsupported by 
friends, three thousand miles from all means of calling upon or 
confronting evidence, where no one local circumstance that tends 
to detect perjury can possibly be judged of; — such a person may 
be executed according to form, but he can never be tried according 
to justice." 

6j. Our experience thus far reflects no credit on 
such a plan. 

38 : 18. Menaces is largely explained hy penal laws in line 20, 
and force in line 23. Both houses of Parliament had also ad- 
dressed the king with heated and numerous assurances of their 
readiness to support the royal authority in the colonies. 

38: 20. Penal laws: such as the Stamp Act, the Tea Duty 
Bill, the Boston Port Bill, the Act for the Impartial Administration 
of Justice in Massachusetts, and various other attempts to coerce 
the Americans, down to the pending penal bill. 

38 : 23. By land and sea : about 3,000 seamen in nineteen 
vessels ; together with the shore garrisons which the King had re- 
cently asked the House of Commons to increase, 

^8 ; 28. Correctly : exactly ; a tautology. 



NOTES. 



105 



64. Only the third method seems advisable ^ — to 
comply with the American spirit. 
-^ 6^. We 7nust concede the boon America desires, — 
so7ne form of self-taxation. 

39 : 9. The characteristic mark and seal of British freedom was 
the privilege of self-taxation. 

66. The question is not one of rights but of policy. 

39 : 20. Nothing to do with the question : The opening eight 
lines of this paragraph constitute a piece of irony that must have 
attracted the attention even of the king's henchmen who slept in 
their seats, or ate oranges. 

39 : 30. Tolity : government. 

40 : 9. Serbonian bog : Herodotus found this bog in Northern 
Egypt, but it has long since disappeared. With it Milton com- 
pares certain regions of Hell, over which the bands of fallen an- 
gels wandered while Satan was on his journey to Earth. 

Burke in a previous debate had not hesitated to admit that Par- 
liament had an unquestionable right to tax America. But in such 
matters his appeal was to expediency, as, in government, the higher 
law. 

40:13. The question with me isy etc.: a powerful antithesis, 
compelling attention to the practical side of the problem of Amer- 
ican taxation. There is compressed into this sentence most of 
Burke's general policy toward the colonies. 

The last two questions in the paragraph emphasize the idea of 
line 15. Compare paragraph 34. 

6y. No consideration should deter us from suiting 
colonial government to colo7iial love of freedom. 

41:3. Sole7nnly abjured : One of Johnson's strong points in 
his Taxation no Tyranny was that by voluntarily quitting England 
the colonists had resigned their right to self-government. 

68. Therefore we ought to assure the colonies a 
permanent interest in the British constitution. 

41 : 16. An iftterest in the constitution means a share in such 
privileges as the constitution secures for citizens. Ireland has to- 
day a small interest, Canada a large one. Burke proposes to make 



!o6 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

the Americans feel they have lost nothing of their birthright of 
citizenship by emigrating. 

6g. The time is past in which a negative course 
could secure content7nent. 

4 1 : 23. Understood principle : The Stamp Tax was repealed 
as a revenue act, not as a trade law, — a distinction on which the 
next four or five paragraphs dwell. Trade laws had been enforced 
upon the colonies for over a century, with comparatively slight ob- 
jection on their part. 

41 : 26. To give perfect content : It is an interesting question 
for discussion, whether it was still possible for England perma- 
nently to bind the thirteen colonies to herself. 

yo. The concession of self-taxation is opposed on 
the ground that A7nerica would then attack the trade 
laws. 

42 : I. American financiers : Members who hope for any con- 
siderable revenue from the colonies. 

42 : 3. Exquisite : apprehensive. Compare inquisitive. 

42 : 8. Further views : Burke discusses this argument in para- 
graph 75. It was a favorite one with the opponents of concession. 

42 : 13. A gentlenian : Mr. Rice, one of those holding the 
opinion that the colonies would take an ell if given an inch. It 
was quite generally suspected that America was aiming at inde- 
pendence. 

yi. When we argue that taxation is unfitst because 
of the trade-law burden, Lord North claims the trade 
laws are of no account. 

42 : 23. Shall : is bound to ; the old sense of the word. 

y2. But when we argue against taxatio7i on prin- 
ciple , Lord North pleads for it as a safeguard to the 
trade laws. 

7j. We admit the trade laws are of use, but think 
them a burden on America, and 7iot threatened by tax-con- 
cession. 

43 : 19. Confine is intensified by narrow. 



NOTES. 107 

Y4. The presumption is that all trouble would be 
avoided by conceding the taxing privilege. 

44 : 2. JVoi a shadow of evidence : This is an exaggeration. 
The trade laws had been felt as an oppression for more than a cen- 
tury. Possibly Burke refers to the two great disputes in the pre- 
ceding decade. The complaints of earlier trade regulations had 
been local, and perhaps had hardly risen to the dignity of Burke's 
idea of a dispute. 

44 : II. Decency : Courtesy to an opponent due to one's self. 

yS- ^^ it fi-ot the natural course to ^ remove the 
avowed cause of quarrel ? 

44:21. Panic fears : imaginary fears such as Pan was sup- 
posed to inspire by the loneliness and shadows of the woods, the 
howling of the wind, etc. 

J^. I favor that course since all objections to it are 
purely conjectural. 

44:31. Suspicions, conjectures, divinations : Each term con- 
demns some special objection. Suspicions show lack of faith in 
American loyalty ; conjectures are mere guesses at what so ener- 
getic apeople may do ; divinations indicate superstition. 

71^. In the light of English history I have formu- 
lated a plan. 

45 • 9' Wisdom of our ancestors : Conservatism is the keynote 
of Burke's statesmanship. 

'mM As Spanish statesmen consulted the genius of 
Philip the Second, I have consulted the spirit of the Eng- 
lish constitution. 

45 : 20. Issue of their affairs : Judging from the relative co- 
lonial strength of Spain and England to-day, the genius of Philip 
would seem completely to have misled his clients. 

45 : 23. The English constitution is not, like that of the United 
States, a written body of fundamental principles of government. 
It consists of various great pieces of legislation, of judicial and 
parliamentary precedents, and of many unwritten laws. This does 
not mean that the English constitution is vague or fragile, but 



lo8 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

simply that the principles underlying all these concrete expressions 
of the national spirit have not been abstracted, and formulated, as 
curs have, in a single document. 

Burke frequently uses the word constitution not as here, but as 
in paragraph 77, to indicate the national spirit itself, — its powers, 
its claims, its responsiveness, its freedom, its unity. 

45 : 25. Four capital examples : There was no superstition in 
consulting this oracle, — the history of four important cases similar 
to that of America. 

7p. Ireland after five hundred years of force y was 
really won by the extension of the privileges of the cofi- 
stitiition. 

45 : 28. Ireland before the English conquest was a seething 
mass of petty kingdoms. Henry II. in 1172 conquered a strip of 
land on the East, and peopled it with English subjects. This sec- 
tion was called the Pale ; and this alone partook of the feast of 
Magna Charta and enjoyed the other English privileges as they were 
granted. After several so-called conquests, the whole country was 
subdued by force in the reign of Elizabeth, and granted civil 
rights in that of her successor. 

46 : 18. Sir John Davies : Speaker of the first Irish House 
of Commons, in the reign of James I. The work to which Burke 
refers has an interesting title, — " Discovery of the true causes why 
Ireland was never entirely subdued nor brought under Obedience 
of the Crown of England until the Beginning of his Majesty's 
happy Reign." 

46:24. Civility: civilization. 

46 : 29. Changed the people : especially in the North by the col- 
onization of Ulster in 16 10. (See Green's Short History, pp. 
439-453, for an account of the affairs of Ireland up to the reign 
of Charles I.) Altered the religion : The Church of England sup- 
planted the Church of Rome. 

47 • 3- Usurpation : the Commonwealth, 1649-1660. 

47 : 4. The glorious revolution : of 1688, which brought in 
"William of Orange and the Bill of Rights. 

47 : 7. Principal part : another evidence of Burke's love for 
Ireland. 



NOTES. 109 

47:11. Were done seems to be open to grammatical crit- 
icism. 

47 : 13. An exception to prove the rule : a complacent use of 
an old Latin adage. The saying has no point, however, unless the 
case in hand is admitted to be exceptional. 

47 : 17. Lucrative : not lucrative. 

47 : 18. The stated and fixed rule has been that Ireland should 
tax herself. When a breach has been made in this constitution 
{i. <?., institution or rule) she has raised no taxes. 

80. Wales ^ under the Lords Marchers^ was in per- 
petual anarchy. 

47 : 32. Lords Marchers : lords of the marches or frontiers. 
They were sanctioned by the early English kings to rule such ter- 
ritory in Wales as they could seize and hold. After Edward I. 
conquered the country, a movement toward introducing English 
laws and customs began, which, notwithstanding fifteen penal reg- 
ulations, did not succeed till Henry VIII. gave the Welsh an inter- 
est in the English constitution. 

48 : 5. Secondary^- incidental to his military authority. Burke 
slyly defines this government in such terms as strongly to suggest 
recent attempts to control Virginia (Dunmore) and Massachusetts 
(Gage) by military power. 

81. Fifteen penal laws were enacted by Parliament. 
48:21. Disarm New England: General Gage was ordered 

to seize the military stores at Cambridge and other places, and 
bring them to Boston. 

82. Yet Wales cdntinued an unprofitable and oppress- 
ive burden to England. 

49:4. Rid : oX^ioxxaoi rode. 

Incubus : a nightmare; an oppressive burden. 

83. In the reign of Henry VIII. gradual concessions 
of liberty resulted in obedience and contentment. 

49:13. Ill-husba7tdry : false economy. 

49 : 14. Tyranny of a free people : tyranny exercised by a free 
people. 

50 : 5. Simul alba nautis^ etc.: Their clear star has shone 



110 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

forth upon the sailors, and lo, the stormy seas flow back down the 
rocks, the winds are stilled, the clouds flee away, and, at their 
bidding, the threatening waves subside upon the deep. — Horace's 
ode in praise of Castor and Pollux. 

84. At the same time, Chester which had been like 
Wales in oppression and disorder, petitioned Parlia- 
ment for representation. 

50:11. County Palatine: a county which the owner rules as 
a king his palace. 

50:17. Standing army : of 2,000 archers, hired by the tyrant as 
his bodyguard. 

50 : 21. Shewen : old form of show; its subject, inhabitants. 

50 : 23. Where : whereas. 

50 : 26. Knights and burgesses : representatives of counties and 
towns respectively. 

50 : 27. Disherisons : deprivations of property. 

50 : 30. Commonwealth : welfare. 
51:4. Ne : nor, 

51:7, Derogatory: injurious. Compare with derogation in 
line 13. 

8^. Parliatnent cordially gra7ited the petition, 

51 : 12. Libel : undeserved or improper censure. 
51:14. Over: ^e. szy upon. 

51 : 17. Temperament : tempering, moderating. 

86. And anarchy in Chester was cured by freedom, 
as it was in the Comity of Durham in the reign of 
Charles II. 

52:1. Abstract extent : Refer to paragraph 82. Burke's pur- 
pose is to silence those who fear the destructive effect of conceding 
the vital privilege of taxation. 

52 : 3. Any considerable district : an echo of the argument in 
paragraph 59. 

8/. Now America, co7npared with Ireland, Wales, 
Chester and Durha??i, still more deserves an interest in 
the constitution. 



NOTES. Ill 

52: 15. Judge Barrington : presiding over three counties of 
Wales. 

52 : 24. Virtually represented : by having laws made for them 
by the representatives of one-ninth of the English people; only 
one million out of nine having the right to elect members to Parlia- 
ment. 

88. If we cannot give America representation in 
Parliament, what satisfactory substitute can we give ? 

53 : 7- Opposuit natura : nature opposes it. (Juvenal, tenth 
Satire.) 

8g. All we need do, is to go back to the policy we 
uniformly followed up to 176^. 

53:25. Republic, Utopia, Oceana: ideal commonwealths; the 
first produced in the fourth century, B. c, the others in the fif- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, A. D,, respectively. 

53 : 28. Rude swain : Milton, Comus, 634, has dull swain. 
Such slight inaccuracies would not occur if the text were consulted 
with deliberate intent to quote, or if Burke did not in his own 
mind lay the chief stress on the thought-content of the quotation. 
For writers less familiar with the original a verification of the 
words is the part of discretion. 

53 : 29. Clouted shoon : heavy bungling shoes, either because 
roughly patched, or studded with nails. 

54 : 5. The year lydj saw Grenville throw over the policy of 
salutary neglect, and adopt exaction and compulsion in colonial 
government. 

go. I shall move that the colonial assemblies be al- 
lowed to grant their own taxes, as they have done legally, 
dutifully and beneficially in the past. 

54 : 6. My resolutions : The substance of the resolutions is 
suggested by the italics in this paragraph. They will repay care- 
ful consideration in ^^2i\x's,,-r-grant and imposition; dutiful and 
beneficial; benefit zxi^ futility . 

54 : 10. Aids : another synonym for supplies, subsidies, 
revenue. 



112 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

gi. I shall move six resolutions which, if accepted, 
will become the pillars of a temple of British concord. 

54 : 21. The temple of British concord : On page 47, line 22, 
this thought first appears. It becomes amplified into a very signifi- 
cant idea as the speech goes on. 

g2. The first resolutiofi simply records the fact that 
two million free Americans, in fourtee?i govenunents, 
have no representation in Parliamejit. 

gj. The second states that these people are discon- 
tented with the impositions laid upon the?fi by Parlia?nent. 

55 : 20. Subsidies given, granted and assented to : This really 
means taxes, demanded of the colonies. 

g4. If the language of this resolution seems unfit, re- 
member I have simply transcribed it from an ancie?it act 
of Parliament. 

55 : 29. Non mens hie sermo, etc. : The doctrine is not mine, 
but that of Ofellus ; who, though a rustic, is wise after a fashion of 
his own. (Horace, second Satire.) 

55 • 3^' Produce : product is more precise. 

56 : 3. Metal, stones, tracks : Here is profusion, if not con- 
fusion, of metaphors. 

The thought of venerable rust may have come from Juvenal 
(thirteenth Satire) ; the thought of profaning the altar with tools 
was evidently suggested by Exodus, 22. Professor Cook says : 
" Observe how the idea of the temple is maintained ; even the 
suggestion from Juvenal contributes, — Compare too, those who de- 
spoil some ancient temple of its massive chalices with their vener- 
able rust, etc." 

95. A7nerica has been touched and grieved, as is 
shown in the admissions and the acts of the advocates of 
taxation themselves. 

56 : 29. Grieved in their privileges : Burke uses a strong 
illustration of this fact in his speech on American Taxation. " The 
feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. 
Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden, when called 



NOTES. 113 

upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings 
have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune ? No ! but the payment of 
half twenty shillings on the principle it was demanded would have 
made him a slave." 

57 : 15. Lord Hillsborough being colonial secretary, wrote to 
America a public assurance that the ministry intended not only to 
lay no further taxes on the colonies, but to remove the duties then 
levied on glass, paper and colors, as duties laid contrary to the true 
principle of commerce. 

57 : 20. The resolution : the " project." 

g6. The third resolution states that no practical 
method of representation has yet bee7i devised, 

gy. The fourth, that every colony has a general as- 
sembly legally authorized to levy taxes for public use. 

g8. Some officers of the Crown deny the legality of 
these grants to the Crown, but they accept them, notwith- 
standing. 

58 : 16. Paradoxically : The contradiction was between their 
theories and their practice. In theory, prominently held by Gren- 
ville. Parliament alone could grant supplies to the crown. Yet 
practically the thing was done by certain colonies every year. 

58:21. Some of the law servants: In 1766 Lord Mansfield 
declared it unconstitutional for any number of people without the 
consent of Parliament, to raise money for the King. 

58:21. If the crown could be responsible: "Whatever the 
English Sovereign does officially is done by the advice of his 
ministers, who are held responsible." (Lamont's note.) 

gg. The fifth resolution asserts that these assemblies 
have not only granted money to the King, but that Par- 
lia?nent has gratefully acknowledged these graiits. 

59 : 10. So high : " so far back." (Lamont.) 

100. For example. Parliament in 1748 reimbursed 
for such grants, four New England colonies. 

10 1. The amount in this instance was over 

jQ2OOjO00, 



114 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

59 : 26. Public credit : An incidental evidence of the legality 
of the grant. 

102. In 1756 the King requested Parliament to 
thank the colonies in his behalf. 

lOj. On this and other occasions ^ up to 176J, Parlia- 
ment voted reimbursements as an encouragement to the 
colonies to continue. 

104. The journals prove that up to 176J the as- 
semblies gave only too freely ^ and that their right to give 
was never questioned. 

60 : 19. Two things : Compare the fifth resolution. 

61:2. Miserable stories: Lamont quotes from Franklin's 
testimony before Parliament : " America has been greatly mis- 
represented and abused here in papers and pamphlets and speeches, 
as ungrateful and unreasonable and unjust, in having put this na- 
tion to immense expense for their defence and refusing to bear any 
part of that expense." 

Two and a half millions had been their contribution towards de- 
fraying the expenses of the French and Indian War. 

61 : 3. Misguided people : the people of England. 

61 : 15. Subject to the payment of taxes : not taxes formally 
laid, but debts assumed in response to requisitions from the min- 
isters of the crown. 

61 : 26. Requisition : The word is more formal and authorita- 
tive than request, but less arbitrary than imposition. See require 
in the fifth resolution. 

10^. Since 1763 the policy of imposition has been 
tried f but has produced no revenue but discontent. 

61 : 30. Revenue by grant : revenue voted in the colonial as- 
semblies. 

106. The sixth resolution asserts the superiority of 
voluntary grants by the assemblies ^ over impositions laid 
by Parliament. 

62: 12. Granting etc.: This is the interest in the British 
Constitution Burke wished to give America, 



NOTES. 115 

107. There was no need of taking the power from 
the colonial assemblies. 

108. Will you choose, then, to abide by a profitable 
experience, or a mischievous theory ? 

log. The first corollary fesolution is directed 
against five penal regulations . 

63 : 6. The following resolution has several points in common 
with what the colonists called the Intolerable Acts. 

63:10. Granting: levying. 

63 : 12. Drawback : A rebate allowed on the import duty 
when imported goods were exported. 

63 : 16. Clandestine running : smuggling. 

63 : 19. An act to discontinue : The Boston Port Bill. 

63:25. An act for the impartial administration of justice : 
The Transportation Act. This provided for the transportation to 
England or to another colony, of any person accused of a capital 
offence committed while aiding the magistrates to enforce the law. 
It was this act which, as Burke said, put the King's soldiers beyond, 
and therefore above, the courts of an English colony. 

63 : 31. An act for the better regulating, etc. : This abrogated 
the charter-government of Massachusetts. It is explained in 
paragraph 46, and the note on it. 

63 : 34. An act for the trial of treasons : See note on line 4, 
page 38. 

110. Here are my reasons for wishing to repeal the 
Boston Port Bill. 

64 : 8. Restraining Bill : the " grar>d penal bill." 

64 : 12. Equal guilt : Circumstances conspired to give Eng- 
lishmen the impression that Massachusetts (especially Boston) was 
the most aggressive of the American malcontents. 

111. Similarly I disbelieve in abrogating the charter 
of Massachusetts. 

64 : 20. Less power : for example, in the matter of veto. 
64 : 27. Exceptionable : blameworthy. 

64 : 32. The returning officer : the sheriff in his capacity as 
summoner of juries. 



Ii6 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

112. The act for the trial of favorites of the govern- 
me7it is justly obnoxious. 

65 : 5. Temporary : to remain in force three years. There is 
a gibe at this idea, in the following sentences, 

II J. The act for the trial of treasons has no just 
bearing on the American colonies. 

65 : 15. In places, etc. : Burke feels that the American col- 
onies, with English charters, having the law intelligently admin- 
istered (see paragraph 42), do not come under this head. 

ii^f.. The second corollary resolution proposes to 
purge the colonial judiciary . 

65 : 17. Having guarded : by several of the items of the first 
corrollary resolution. Some of those items have a double bearing 
however. 

65 ; 23. Settled salary : settled not by the king, but by vote of 
the local legislature; and paid not out of rents accruing to the 
king (which would compromise a judge's independence), but by 
colonial grant. 

65: 27. During good behavior : and not during the pleasure of 
the king. 

65 : 29. On complaint : The complaint might originate with 
the general assembly, that is, council and house of representatives 
in conjunction ; or it might originate with any separate branch of 
the colonial government. 

115. The thirds to do a similar service for the ad- 
miralty courts. 

66:1. Courts of admiralty : in which marine questions and 
customs cases were settled. By an atrocious plan which had just ^ 
been changed when this speech was delivered, the admiralty-jus- 
tice was paid with a portion of the goods condemned in his own 
court, a third of all seizures also going to the governor of the 
province. Naturally seizures were thought desirable by these of- 
ficials. In the course of discussion Burke was informed of the 
redress of this grievance, and the resolution was amended. 

66 ; 6, Commodiotts ; convenient. They were few and far apart. 



NOTES. 117 

ii6. The courts should be situated conveniently and 
administered with honor. 

117. These three corollary resolutions embrace what 
is practicable as an application of the first six. 

66 : 20, Consequential : consequent. 

118. Of objections to my plan, the first will be that 
the Chester preamble protests against all parliamentary 
control as well as against taxation. 

66:31. The first will be, etc.: The straw man that Burke 
now sets up is an interesting dummy. Burke shows what he is 
made of in paragraph 119. 

iig. The resolution is drawn from the Durham pre- 
amble, which had reference to taxation only. 

67 : II. Inconclusive : unfounded, that is, not drawn from the 
language of the preamble with logical accuracy, as a sound con- 
clusion should be. This is an unusual sense of the word, which 
usually means unconvincing. 

67 : 16. Moved to have read: in order to prove that the taxa- 
tion of dependencies without their voice, had always been the 
right of Parliament. 

67 : 18. In favor of his opinions : Pitt replied that he would 
cite the same preambles to show that former Parliaments had been 
ashamed of this arbitrary taxation and had abandoned it. 

67:21. As favorable as possible to both: but distinctly more 
favorable to Pitt, and now to Burke, than to Grenville. 

67 : 30. De jure or de facto bound: bound by right, or by fact 
without regard to right. The question of the right to tax these 
dependencies was "put totally out of the question." 

120. The colonies would of course like ideal liberty, 
but they will be quite content with the concession I pro- 
pose. 

68 : 12. Illation : the name for the mental process which re- 
sults in an inference. Study the derivation. 

We Englishmen stop : The remainder of the paragraph is de- 
voted to proving and illustrating the first ten lines. 



ii8 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

Compromise and barter : a favorite principle with Burke, and 
one which he did much to teach the world. 

68 : 30. Apt to make slaves haughty : as a tyrannical government 
is apt to beget many corrupt aristocratic dependants. This arti- 
ficial importance which had undermined the English nation in the 

reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., was exactly what Burke, as a 
Whig, most strongly opposed. 

69 : 12. The cords of man : the touch of nature that makes the 
whole world kin. The expression as used in Hosea XI., means 
heart-strings, but Burke applies it to common prudence. 

121, Their natural impulse will be loyalty, when 
they find England a gracious and iftdulgent protector. 

69 : 24. Security, not the rival : an appeal to the magnanimity 
of his hearers which it seems impossible should have failed to 
touch them. 

69 : 30. Some share of those rights : Some interest in the Brit- 
ish Constitution. 

122. True imperial unity, like the unity of the hu- 
man body, was exemplified in our relations with Amer- 
ica up to 176J. 

70:11. Separate legislature: Pitt, the younger, in 1800, 
bought out the Irish Parliament and united it with that of England. 

70 : 14. Conservation : a stronger term tha.n preservation. 

^" I2J. I will briefly state my objections to Lord 
Nor tK s project for American reve^tue. 

70 : 27. Proposition of the noble lord : " the project." 
71:4. Before the committee : of the whole House, Feb. 20. 
124. I object to it because it is an unprecede7ited ex- 
periment upon the peace of this Empire. 

71 : 10. Experimentum, etc. : experiment on a worthless ob- 
ject. The rule is, — Fiat experimentum, etc. 

71 : 12. Adverse to : Compare aversion from, line 22, page 21. 
Adverse is generally used of things, not of persons. 

12^. Secondly, because the taxifig would be done, Jiot 
by Parliament but by some cabinet committee. 



NOTES, 119 

71:23. Proportional payment : taking into consideration the 
actual wealth of every colony ; its wealth compared with that of 
every other colony ; its wealth compared with that of Great 
Britain ; also, the absolute and relative burdens of these various 
governments. 

71:28. Back door: Compare line 17. The ministry would 
have to proportion the payments, and Parliament would iiot dare 
re-open so complex a question. 

126. Thirdly, because it pretends to give satisfaction, 
but is a mere delusion. 

12'j. Fourthly, because in the way of administration 
would lie insurmotmtable obstacles ; as, first, the diffi- 
culty of settling proportion of payments. 

128. Second, the difficulty of coercing those colonies 
which refuse to bid, while those which bid bear all the 
burden. 

73 : 8. Composition : compromise. 

73:21. English revenue: English merchants paid duty on 
the importation of immense quantities of tobacco. 

74 : 3- Confound the innocent with the guilty : as the penal bill 
would punish all New England colonies for the sins of part ; and 
as it would include with those who were responsible for the dis- 
turbances, many who had been absent at sea. This Restraining 
Bill was passed over the protest of 4,500 Quakers on Nantucket, 
who were " entirely innocent in respect to the present disturbances 
in America, and who would be exposed to all the hardships of 
famine." (Quoted by Lamont from the Parliamentary History.) 

I2g. Third, the dilemma of a trifling fixed revenue 
on one hand, and constant quarrel about the amount on 
the other. 

ijo. Fourth, intestine dissatisfaction which will 
require constant suppression. 

74119. Treasury extent: "a writ issued against the body, 
land and goods of a crown debtor." (Cook.) 



I20 ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, 

74 : 27. The Empire of Gerjuany : the tottering Holy Roman 
Empire, which Napoleon dissolved in 1806. 

74 : 28. Quotas and contmgenis : substantially interchange- 
able terms. Every one of the' States, v^^ith Austria at their head, 
was called upon for so much money and so many troops. 

iji. Instead of a standing quarrel, so provoked, I 
propose a plan of peace and union. 

IJ2. My plan, unlike Lord North's, is simple, mild, 
recommended by experience, universal and iinmediate in 
operation, and an act of free grace. 

75:16. Perplexed and intricate mazes : Compare paragraphs 
9 and 10. 

zjj. To those who argue that it gives no revenue, I 
reply that freedom, prosperity and gratitude in the sub- 
ject are the greatest of all revenues. 

76 : 18. Posita luditur area : the treasure-chest itself is staked 
on the game — Juvenal, first Satire. 

79 : 21. Accumulated a debt : proving the possession of a cor- 
responding credit. 

77 : 2. Has a tendency to increase the stock : It is nowadays a 
commonplace, that any disturbance of the public mind affects trade. 

77 : 6. Voluntary flow of heaped up plenty : Observe the 
cheerfulness with which the burden of our American public ex- 
penditures is born at the present time, 

IJ4. Moreover in a free country there are parties ; 
and parties for their own good would vie with one an- 
other in serving the mother country. 

77 : 19. This gatne : There is hardly a more suggestive figure 
of speech in the oration than this. Contrast, in imagination, the 
state of America as Burke desired it, — the game of parties being 
played in a free atmosphere with a voluntary appeal to England as 
holder of the stakes — with the state of America Lord North's plan 
would produce, in which " absolute power would be ill obeyed 
because odious, and contracts would be ill kept because con- 
strained." 



NOTES. 121 

^35' ^hat we want is the payment of that eternal 
debt which is due to generous government from protected 
freedom. 

136. Expect no material revenue from America ex- 
cept imposts, trade advantages, and the defrayal of 
colonial expenses. 

78 : 16. Taxable objects : especially tobacco. 

78:18. Foreign sale: Burke's idea is that the duty paid by 
.English merchants on imports from America, is clear gain to the 
nation, because it is paid out of the profits of these imports when 
they are resold to other countries. The word you is applied first 
to the treasury of England, then to the people of England. 

78:25. Enemies: Spain and, especially, France. Both 
countries seriously menaced the American colonies in case of 
European War. 

137' Bind her to you by those ties which alone are 
vital, English kinship and English privilege. 

78 : 29. Her interest : Burke uses the closing paragraphs of 
the speech, to enforce this central principle of his politics. 

79 : 29. Of price : precious, a Latinism. It suggests the 
Scriptural — "of great price." 

79 : 23. True Act of Navigation : Emphasis is again laid on 
the spirit of the constitution. Compare page 76, line 10, " the 
first of all revenues." 

79 : 29. Registers^ honds^ affidavits : as connected with custom- 
house operations. 

79 : 30. Sufferances: permits for the shipment of dutiable goods. 
Cockets : receipts for payment of duties. 

Clearances : Sailing papers granted to merchantmen. 

80 : 2. The great contexture of the mysterious whole : Read 
Morley's Life of Burke, pages 162 and 163. 

ij8. These are the motives which make England her- 
self what she is. 

80:15. Mutiny Bill: a strange name for the act annually 
passed to provide for certain expenses of the British army. Green 



1 22 ON CONCILIA TION WITH AMERICA. 

gives a luminous account of its original passage, as a corollary of 
the Bill of Rights in 1689, (Short History, page 666.) 

80 : 22. Nothing but rotten timber : an expression interesting 
when contrasted with our modern phrase, ♦* the men behind the 
guns." 

ijg. Those who recognize the national spirit will 
feel that it dictates that ancient, generous wisdom, whicli 
has made the true greatness of the British Empire. 

80:25. Mechanical politicians: relying on "passive tools,' 
etc., paragraph 137. 

81 : 2. Little minds: From the vote on Burke's resolutions 
they seem to have had a majority of about four to one, in that 
Parliament. 

81 : 5. Auspicate : favorably introduce. The word is derived 
from auspicium, the consultation of the birds by the Roman' 
augurs. It is not quite in harmony with the phrase from the 
Christian lit.urgy which follows. 

81 : 15. As we have got, etc. : For the method, see Burke's 
doctrine of "salutary neglect." This sentence and the ones 
which immediately precede and follow it, are perhaps the strongest 
in the speech. 

140. In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I 
now move the first resolution. 

81 : 19. Quoa felix faustumque sit ! : And may the outcome 
be happy and successful ! An old Roman invocation. 

The first stone : Following the six chief resolutions, the cor- 
ollary three were moved, divided into seven. Not one was passed. 

81 : 27. Put and carried : in all probability, an editorial blun- 
der. What was carried, was the intention of the previous question. 

In English parliamentary practice, the previous question is 
moved as a tactful way of rejecting a delicate measure. It is 
moved by a member who intends to vote against his own motion. 
The resolutions which, in this case, had the previous question put 
on them were such as no rational being could directly oppose. The 
resolutions which afforded ground for objection, however slight, 
were squarely negatived. 



SECOND iMPREsSiOM. 

FORD'S THE FEDERALIST. 

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